The first earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.8, struck in the early hours of Monday 6 February near the city of Gaziantep, near the Turkish-Syrian border.
A few hours later, a second earthquake measuring 7.5 struck 80 miles north, caused widespread damage and killed more than 40,000 people.
ACS has arranged multiple passenger and cargo charters, with the first flight arriving from Spain on Tuesday morning and the first flight for the UK Government arriving that afternoon.
Ben Dinsdale, Director of Government and Humanitarian Services, says that ACS started receiving calls from governments and NGOs within hours of the earthquake and following some research, the team found out that Gaziantep’s airport was still functional.
It was suitable for search and rescue teams though not for cargo, but Adana was less congested and had a highloader, and Damascus had loading equipment available.
He says, “By Tuesday morning we had our first representative on the ground at Gaziantep Airport overseeing the arrival of our first flight – a chartered Airbus A330-200 from Germany, carrying a search and rescue team on board. Later in the day the UK government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office’s first search and rescue team, including dogs, to the affected areas arrived on board another Airbus A330-200, which was also carrying vital cargo in its hold.”
ACS has arranged several flights to Gaziantep and cargo flights started flying into Adana late last week including a Boeing 747-400 carrying an entire field hospital.
Since then, multiple charters have been arranged using aircraft including IL-76s, B737s, B747s, B757s and B777s to Adana and Damascus, and one each to Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and Aleppo, Syria.
Dinsdale says that having someone on the ground was helpful to coordinate flights in Gaziantep and he let the team know that a maindeck highloader was available in Istanbul.
He says, “He had to sleep at the airport itself and was available to assist with all our flights at any hour of the day. With many of the cargo flights now going into Adana, we also flown someone in to oversee everything there.”