Panagiotis Kotridis, former regional Commander of the Fire Service of the Aegean Sea, wanted to send his own message of support and solidarity to the Greek rescuers who are fighting against time to save lives in the regions of Turkey that were hit by the deadly earthquakes .
The digital image captures a fantastic composition, according to the creator. It has gone viral in the last few hours on Greek and Turkish social media networks, fully reflecting the contribution of the special disaster management team (EMAK) personnel in the affected areas of Turkey.
"To honour the colleagues who are doing their best to save those affected by the earthquakes in Turkey, I made this image," he sais in his post, adding: "I am here for you" in Greek, English and Turkish. The composition depicts a Greek fireman lovingly holding a small child, whom he freed from the ruins.
As the creator states, this is a composition and not a real photo - a result of Photoshop and Midjourney (artificial intelligence program) mastered by himself.
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The death toll in Turkey from Monday’s earthquakes has risen to 14,014, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has said, with more than 63,000 people injured.
Visiting the quake-hit province of Gaziantep, Erdoğan said more than 6,400 buildings had been destroyed and that Turkey aimed to build new three and four-storey buildings in the region within one year, Reuters reports.
A total of at least 3,162 are confirmed dead in Syria, with government-held areas reporting 1,262 people dead and 1,900 killed in the rebel-controlled northwest, meaning the combined tally in both countries now stands at 17, 176.
Experts have said that it is likely to continue to rise.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has underlined the importance for humanitarian organisations of making sure that people who have survived the quake “continue to survive”.
The WHO’s incident response manager, Robert Holden, told reporters in Geneva many were surviving “out in the open, in worsening and horrific conditions” with severely disrupted water, fuel and electricity supplies:
We are in real danger of seeing a secondary disaster which may cause harm to more people than the initial disaster if we don’t move with the same pace and intensity as we are doing on the search and rescue side. People need the basic elements to survive the next period.
An aid convoy has reached northwestern Syria, the first since Monday’s devastating earthquake that has killed nearly more than 1,000 people in the the rebel-held area, an official at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing has told Agence France-Presse.
An AFP correspondent reported seeing six trucks passing through the crossing from Turkey carrying tents and hygiene products. The border official, Mazen Alloush, said the delivery had been expected before Monday’s quake.
The UN had earlier said it had received assurances that the first aid would reach northwestern Syria through the sole authorised crossing from Turkey on Thursday.
Relief efforts in Turkey and Syria are being hampered by a “raft of issues”, a former British Army logistics expert has said.
Retired Major General Sir Tim Cross told Sky News: “The sadness of the slow response… You need people on the ground allocating resources, understanding what is needed. You need to clear the roads to get in and out of these areas.
“You need support helicopters to get people away from the danger area and further danger. So there is a whole raft of issues that are going on here.”
He added: “You’ve got the people who are buried but you also have the survivors. Those survivors need to be given shelter, water, food, sanitation, medical support, power – all of those issues that are essentially logistics issues.”
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