ELIOT, Maine — "It was the biggest destruction I've seen in a quake. Ever," Andrew Wallace said.
Wallace returned late Thursday evening to his home in Eliot, Maine after spending eight days on the ground in Turkey after the region was rocked by a powerful earthquake.
"Get there the first or second day, hopefully on the ground, and then just start doing the work of finding people," Wallace said.
Wallace is a volunteer and member of the international search and rescue group Los Topos and said this is the seventh natural disaster he has responded to.
"You just hope that there's somebody there who's got your back in a situation where you need it," Wallace said.
Wallace said the first earthquake he responded to was in Haiti in 2010. Since then, he's continued volunteering with Los Topos, helping with search and rescue operations following disasters like earthquakes.
"We do a lot of digging," Wallace said. "Buckets, shovels, hands. We did have a fair amount of grinders, cutting tools, things of that nature to get through rebar and break up cement and concrete. Listening devices and cameras are also part of the package that we bring."
He said that on his second day on the ground in Turkey, and more than three days after the earthquake, he and his team were able to locate a 56-year-old woman who was still alive, trapped beneath the rubble.
"The son of this woman was with us the whole time, watching and praying and waiting and hoping. And his dream, his world became real. He got his mother back. And that was pretty cool," Wallace said.
Due to the level of destruction caused by the earthquake, Wallace said there were far more recoveries than rescues. He added, however, that too is very important and can help families with missing relatives find closure, even if their loved ones did not survive.
"Even if they're recoveries, not alive, there's a sense of closure for the families that they'll never know unless they get something back," Wallace said.
Wallace said he does not have immediate plans to return to Turkey to assist in search and rescue operations. He added he will remain prepared to respond to any future emergencies that require his and his team's search and rescue skills.