n a couch pulled from an apartment in the ruined Turkish city of Antakya, two weary volunteer rescuers stared into the flames of a bonfire. 

Their group had saved five lives, leader Mustapha said, but were disappointed not to have rescued more. All day while they worked, they had faced the grief – and at times anger – of relatives unable to accept the loss of their loved ones. 

“It’s hard to tell people that their family members are dead. They are yelling and saying bad things,” said Mustapha, a paragliding instructor from Konya. 

Nearly three full days after Monday’s pre-dawn earthquake, odds of survival are so low that rescue teams must focus on sites only where signs of life are still detectable.

“We tell them that five times, we looked with the thermal camera and saw nothing. There is no sound, there is no warmth,” he said. 

“But they can’t understand how we can see them and touch them, but we can’t take them out.”

Protocol dictated that no one was confirmed dead until removed from the rubble, to avoid mistaken identities and raising false hope.

“They are asking, ‘Where is the body?’ but we can’t say,” Mustapha said, not wanting to explain to relatives how a loved one could be smashed under tonnes of concrete. “When we shut our mouths, they are more angry.”

No rescuers whatsoever were working on the fallen building where Resime Ucor was maintaining her vigil for a third sleepless night.