Featured Image Credit: Taha Erdem/AP
Topics: World News, News, Good News
Rachel Lang
A high schooler in Turkey has been plucked from the rubble of his destroyed home shortly after he posted a heartbreaking goodbye video.
Taha Erdem, 17, thought he was done for, so he took to social media to say goodbye to his friends, family, and survivors.
"I think this is the last video I will ever shoot for you," he said from underneath the collapsed building that used to be his home.
"I am dead if I am not wrong.
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"There is close to 500kg (about 1,000 pounds) on top of my feet. My [feet] are gone. I could have hurt my head when I was getting it out of there."
"We are still shaking.
"Death, my friends, comes at a time when one is least expecting it.
The 17-year-old said to the camera: "There are many things that I regret. May God forgive me of all my sins. If I get out of here alive today there are many things that I want to do.
"We are still shaking."
Speaking to Associated Press (AP), he reflected on what went through his mind when the earthquake happened.
"When I got up on my feet and fell again from the tremors, I understood that an earthquake was happening," he said.
"Our building was collapsed at the 7th, 10th second anyways.
"By the time I was running to the door, I was already under the rubble.
"Separately, in the video, aftershocks were still happening, the roof was collapsing towards me more and more.
"The reason I shot that video was as the roof was getting closer to me I had thought that I was going to die."
The teenager recounted that he thought his family had been killed when he posted the heartbreaking clip.
He said he thought he would soon join them, but he was one of the very first plucked from the rubble 11 days ago, two hours after the 7.8 magnitude quake.
In his chat with AP, the 17-year-old said they were now living in a tent provided by the government, just like hundreds of thousands of others who survived the disaster that struck across southern Turkey and north Syria.
The massive earthquake, which struck on February 6, has left more than one million people homeless.
The death roll now sits at 45,000 people. with the economic cost of the disaster expected to run into billions of dollars, Reuters reports.