SINGAPORE – A 68-member Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) team, which has been helping with rescue operations in Turkey after a magnitude-7.8 earthquake struck the region on Feb 6, will head home on Friday.
The mission, called Operation Lionheart, started on Feb 8 when the SCDF sent a group of 20 officers equipped with portable urban search and rescue (Usar) equipment, life detection devices and fibre-optic scopes to Turkey.
A second team, comprising 48 officers and four dogs from SCDF’s K-9 unit, arrived on Feb 10 with additional equipment, medical supplies, and communication and logistics support tools.
The officers will land in Singapore early on Saturday morning, when they will be received by Minister for Home Affairs and Law K. Shanmugam, Minister of State for Home Affairs and National Development Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, and Turkish Ambassador to Singapore Mehmet Burcin Gonenli.
A few days ago, the officers linked up with Turkey’s National Medical Rescue Team and contributed supplies such as trauma equipment and medical drugs, food, thermal wear and tents, said the SCDF in a Facebook post.
They also presented local residents with their Usar suits as a gesture of friendship and solidarity.
SCDF said: “Although the Operation Lionheart contingent is leaving Turkey, the people of Turkey will always be in our hearts and minds.”
Singapore’s Ambassador to Turkey, Mr Jonathan Tow, visited the contingent’s base in the south-eastern town of Kahramanmaras on Wednesday as the team prepared to stand down after eight days of search and rescue work.
During this period, operations they were involved in included working with the Local Emergency Management Agency to rescue a man in Kahramanmaras after they were notified of faint calls for help from a partially collapsed two-storey building.
They also worked with local and Spanish teams to rescue a boy from a three-storey building that had collapsed.
The massive earthquake and its aftershocks struck Turkey and neighbouring Syria, leaving tens of thousands of people dead and many more displaced as buildings were reduced to rubble.
