Civilian rescue teams offer help at home and abroad

Sense of helplessness

Wang quickly discovered that most of the volunteers were carrying luggage rather than rescue equipment.

Though he had brought his mountaineering rope, it turned out to be useless for earthquake rescue, he recalled. However, one volunteer had a handheld GPS device. "Back then, that was quite advanced equipment for us," Wang said.

He recalled a strong sense of helplessness after reaching Hanwang, a township in Sichuan's Deyang city. On the day the volunteers arrived, the death toll in Deyang reached several hundred. The number shot up to more than 1,000 on the second day, then over 4,000 on the third, he said.

A huge pit was dug to accommodate the bodies. "One time, the other volunteers and I stood in a daze in front of the pit. I tortured myself again and again, asking myself if I'd had the ability to rescue people would at least one or two of them have been saved?" Wang recalled.

That sense of helplessness made the volunteers determined to establish a professional rescue team.

Thanks to joint efforts in different regions, the Blue Sky Rescue group was registered in Beijing in September 2010. The NGO now has 30,000 volunteers nationwide, it said.

Wang, head of the BSR's Guizhou branch, said the first piece of equipment they bought after returning from Sichuan was a static rope, which was used for high angle rescue operations in mountains and caves. It cost about 800 yuan, so 10 volunteers split the bill.

"The Guizhou BSR has equipment worth several million yuan," said Wang, a successful entrepreneur who has bought a lot of the equipment himself. He said the equipment — including pneumatic hammers, life detection devices and diving gear — means the team can undertake different types of tasks.

The rescue gear they carried to Turkiye helped win them the trust of local rescue teams. "Though some rubble had already been searched by teams from other countries, the local teams insisted that we searched again," Wang said.

Wang Kaibo, head of the BSR in Qinghai province who also went to Turkiye, said the radar life detector they carried could detect life signs precisely. "Some local residents and rescuers even came to us after midnight to seek help," he said, adding that the team's equipment has recently been greatly upgraded.

When the Qinghai BSR went to Yushu (in Qinghai) after it was hit by a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in April 2015, many members joked that they only had their courage and hands, he recalled, indicating the lack of advanced equipment back then.