The earthquakes in Kahramanmaraş, described as the disaster of the century, caused great destruction and loss of life in 11 provinces. Volunteer teams who went to the earthquake area fought to save lives with great devotion in search and rescue efforts. Volunteer search and rescue hero Mustafa Aydın was one of those names as the ‘man with smoke coming out of his head’ on social media.
Mustafa Aydın, who is known to Turkey as the man with smoke coming out of his head, was a guest of Armağan Çağlayan’s Gör Beni program and once again made hearts ache with what he told.
Mustafa Aydın came to Hatay from Istanbul on the second day of the earthquake and was involved in the search and rescue efforts voluntarily. Deciding to take the first bus to Hatay, Aydın lied to his wife saying ‘AFAD called me’.
Aydın told Armağan Çağlayan the story of smoke coming out of his head as follows;
“We came out of a wreck and were walking around the street. It was the third day of the earthquake, it was the 90th hours. We were working separately from other search and rescue teams. ‘Does anyone hear our voices in the side streets?’ we were shouting. One young man said there is a voice here. We went right away. I stopped it just as the building was about to collapse.
We entered the building between the third and fourth floors. We worked non-stop for the first 4 hours. We were close to Hikmet. But now Hikmet was in the hallucination phase. He had created a world for himself, and he was speaking from within that world.
He said, ‘Brother, you must not know, there was an earthquake here 3-4 days ago, I am not alone at home, my mother and father died. I don’t want to leave the house in a very depressed mood,” he said. He couldn’t get out anyway, his head was stuck, his arm was turned upside down and he was under the wares, under the slabs of his calves.
So what did you do, I said Hikmet, aren’t you bored here? He said, “He was bored, brother, I watched TV, I watched a match. So what did you eat at home? I made eggs, I made melemen, I want to eat meat, but I do not have the morale to go out and buy it,”he said. At that time, everyone on the team was crying.”
“At the end of 96 hours, I asked for a break to plan my exit. I went outside and I was shaking. My body temperature was 40-41 degrees, but at another time, you would say you have a convulsion. It was -10 degrees when I went outside, and the temperature difference of 52 degrees caused all the sweat on my body to evaporate.
We made the exit plan and successfully pulled it out. Hikmet wanted to hug me before he went home. But that moment was not right for him. But in order to keep my promise, after 14 days, I found the hospital where he stayed before I went home and I hugged him,” Armağan Çağlayan could not hold back his tears.
After the waterfall; He asked a question, “How did you decide to go to Hatay?” and Aydın explained with these words;
‘When I saw the breaking news of the earthquake, I was heartbroken. That’s when I decided to go out. However, I didn’t have a car, so I waited for the morning because it was far from my house. I told my wife this morning. I was an AFAD volunteer, I waited for a message, but the message did not come. I went on a quest to go on my own. I saw an advertisement saying ‘He is going to Hatay’ on social media and I called. I went there with one of the first buses to Hatay. People were screaming when we went.’
The famous server ‘They always say this. Not like what you see on TV? really?’ he asked a question.
Mustafa Aydın described Hatay with these words: ‘Absolutely not. I also went to Kahramanmaraş, you can count the destroyed buildings there. Antioch is not like that. When you look at Antakya from Belen Hill, you can count the surviving buildings. Now you can say that there is no map of Antakya.’
Mustafa Aydın, who said that the generation Z, who has been humiliated and marginalized by the society for 3-4 years, should come and learn the lesson of humanity from the generation Z, ‘They carried thousands of tons of materials with chains. 35-40-pound girls carried with 18-pound oil cans. Generation Z taught a lesson in humanity there. I was proud of them. He drew attention with his words ‘Let it be a lesson to the X generation who do not know themselves.
Stating that his wife was his biggest support during this process, Mustafa Aydın said, ‘If you are there and they need you, stay there, and he did not ask once when you will come. He didn’t even call during the day until I called him. To keep the phone busy. Those who came there and made stories on the ground kept the already existing mobile GSM networks busy enough, but my wife did not.’ He also expressed his reaction to those who broadcast on social media.
Stating that they were in the region from the first moment of the earthquake, Mustafa Aydın explained that while they were working on another wreckage, as a result of the falling debris, his ear was torn from the cartilage part and 27 stitches were applied.