THOSE WHO SAVE LIVES


  • Photographer
    JM Lopez
  • Prize
    Honorable Mention
  • Company/Studios
    Freelance
  • Date of Photograph
    May/June 2014
  • Technical Info
    Digital Images

The White Helmets are groups of people who are in charge of rescuing civilians buried under rubble after a building is bombed by the regime air force. There are 5 teams spread around rebel area in Aleppo and 135 people are working in all, they are available 24 hours per day and 7 days per week.

Story

The new death threat in Aleppo comes from the sky in the shape of barrels full of TNT. They are launched from helicopters of the regime and they can reduce a building of five floors to rubble and dust. These “home-made bombs” are cheaper than a missile or a conventional rocket but their destructive power is much higher. With a daily average of more than 25 barrel bombs, the city of Aleppo pays the price for so much cruelty and destruction with collapsed buildings, debris and casualties.

One day Al-Assad’s Army destroyed a whole block with a Scud missile in the neighborhood of Ard Al-Hamra killing a lot of people trapped under rubble because there wasn’t any specialized rescue team. That day The White Helmets were created with the aim of being the first ones to arrive and save as many lives as possible. Since then 135 people work in shifts of 24 hours 7 days a week in five different places inside the city of Aleppo.

Equipments are given by a British NGO but they are not enough, sometimes it took them more than one week to recover all the bodies under the rubble because it is something almost impossible to do with the tools they have, even so they continue on the front line trying to save as many lives as possible although the number of lost souls is higher. The dramatic situation in Aleppo remains silenced. There is no interest in telling what happens here, Syria is not trendy.

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