Abdulla is from the town of Bardarash in the Kurdistan Region’s Duhok province. He has been working for ten hours every day for the past two weeks along with dozens more.
"Thanks be to God, we have rescued many people, discovered many things that we returned to their owners and I am very thrilled about what I am doing," Abdulla, a backhoe driver, said proudly.
Abdulla said that over the past two weeks has come across "gold, money, and safes," and has returned them to their owners.
A destructive 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Kurdish city of Kahramanmaras in Turkey on February 6, with its impact also ripping through neighboring Syria. Another quake followed in both countries hours later. Two other tremors, 6.4-magnitude, and 5.8-magnitude hit the Turkish province of Hatay late Monday.
A total of 110 construction vehicles including backhoes, front-end loaders, and articulated haulers. Volunteers have been working alongside rescue teams from more than 70 countries to remove trails of destruction and piles of rubble from the site of destroyed buildings in Adiyaman.
The vehicles have been sent by the Kavin Group, a construction company in the Kurdistan Region along with teams from the Barzani Charity Foundation.
The team has been tasked with different duties. Some of them remove debris while others make way for building makeshift camps for the affected and those displaced by the devastating tremor that has claimed the lives of up to 40,000 people and displaced millions more.
Kaniwar Jubrael, Kavin Group team leader in Adiyaman said their outstanding performance on the ground had pushed the Turkish state to call on them to stay longer in the quake-devastated region and help the state in their efforts to build more camps for those displaced by the tremor.
"This is very important for Turkey itself that we are working in these cities. More than anything else Turkey now needs camps to be built. They have officially called on us to stay longer here to continue our work," Jubrael said.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday promised to construct nearly 200,000 permanent houses in 11 quake-devastated provinces in the country within a year.
