Dozens of SCDF officers from the Operation Lionheart contingent were deployed to Türkiye last month to help with rescue efforts after a devastating earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people.
The situation was dire. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake had rocked the country as well as Syria just days earlier, claiming thousands of lives.When a search canine from a Spanish rescue team picked up the scent of someone under the rubble of a three-storey building, SCDF used a fibre-optic scope to confirm that was the case.
Among them were 37 officers from the elite Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team , paramedic specialists, doctors and four canines from the SCDF’s K-9 unit.another man the following dayThe team is from a contingent known as Operation Lionheart, which is on standby round-the-clock. It was formed in 1990 and has since been deployed on 19 search and rescue or humanitarian relief assistance missions.It was Staff Sergeant Tamimi’s first overseas deployment.
Once the teams confirmed someone was alive under the rubble, they began drilling breach spots. This posed a challenge as debris could fall on casualties, Lieutenant Rashid added. Staff Sergeant Tamimi recounted: “He was saying something in Turkish and I couldn't understand. I gave him assurance with my hand signals, showing him the exit out of the void ... I requested a bottle of water for the boy to take a sip before we commenced with the rescue.Lieutenant Rashid said he was “quite surprised” to see the boy “go out so fast” and had to hold him down to protect his head and pull him out.
A Singapore Civil Defence Force team takes part in a search and rescue operation in a semi-collapsed building in Dulkadiroglu, southern Türkiye, on Feb 9, 2023.
“I told my parents … They’re used to it already,” he added. The 44-year-old was deployed for rescue efforts overseas in 2011 and 2015.
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