ADANA, Türkiye

Distances do not matter when hearts are close, remarked a member of a search and rescue team from Thailand as the group prepared to fly out from Türkiye.

The 42-member Thai team was in Türkiye for eight days, joining thousands of other local and international crews in the race to find survivors of the Feb. 6 twin tremors that have caused widespread death and devastation in 11 southern Turkish provinces.

“It is an honor for us to actually be here to help our friends in need. Even though we are far off, geographically, we are very close in our hearts,” Pannapa Na Nan, a team member, told Anadolu at the airport in Adana.

“When our friends are in need, we have no hesitation in offering our help. Our friendship will last long,” she asserted.

Lerpong Suansang, the crew’s leader, said they landed in Türkiye on Feb. 10 and were deployed to the city of Antakya in the southern Hatay province.

“Our team includes one doctor, two nurses, and two search dogs,” he said.

The dogs were quite active and proved very helpful, he said.

Nan chipped in to point out that the team brought 10 tons of equipment for search and rescue, as well as medicines and their own food.

“We were self-sufficient,” she added.

The Thai team comprised had personnel from the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, Bangkok Metropolitan Municipality, engineers, public health workers, besides officials from a safety company and an organization that trains sniffer dogs.

Last week’s earthquakes have affected more than 13 million people in 11 provinces across southern Türkiye – Kahramanmaras, Hatay, Gaziantep, Adiyaman, Malatya, Adana, Diyarbakir, Kilis, Osmaniye, Sanliurfa, and Elazig.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described the catastrophe as the biggest disaster in the country’s modern history.

Around 100 countries have offered assistance so far, while more than 9,000 international search and rescue teams, including the one from Thailand, took part in relief operations.