The end, there is nothing more to look for here - were the words of the Montenegrin rescuers, when they were the last to leave the ruins on the coast of Durres on Friday after 15 pm.
Thus ended Albania's four-day convulsive struggle to find all the survivors and victims of the strong earthquake, which hit the country before dawn on the night between Monday and Tuesday. The wounded earth buried 50 victims, and on Friday life in Durres, a port city on the Adriatic coast, it almost looked as if one of the strongest earthquakes in the history of that country had not happened a few days before.
While the rescuers from Montenegro and Serbia on the ruins where the "Mia mare" hotel used to be located, on the very coast, with teams of search dogs, spent hours trying to find another missing body, locals were sitting and drinking coffee in nearby cafes.
And it was precisely the coastal part of the city, the buildings, houses and hotels studded right next to the sandy shore, that suffered the most from the ground shaking in the first shock with a magnitude of 6,4 on the Richter scale.
This is not so surprising, because the sea and the coast in Durrës are not separated by any promenade, street, or wall, but buildings without any order or style have sprung up on the sandy beach.
At first glance, it was not difficult to conclude that the buildings that were most likely built without respecting any architectural rules were collapsed or cracked.
Thus, the hotel "Mio mare" was demolished to the ground, and the building right next to it remained almost intact.
Right under the ruins of that hotel, 18 trained rescuers from Montenegro and their colleagues from Serbia spent three days searching for life or lifeless bodies under the pile of concrete and rubble.
"We have been at this location since Wednesday, where we are searching for victims with rescuers from Serbia and Croatia. Since this is a complex task, we were helped by search dogs with teams from France and Switzerland," Radomir Šćepanović, the leader of the Montenegrin rescuers, told "Vijesta".
The rescuers found the bodies of a man and a woman under that hotel, which was also known as a brothel in Durrës.
It was suspected that there was another lifeless body of a woman under the pile of concrete, so the dogs sniffed the ruins for days. A little after noon, it seemed that the 50th victim had been found, but a little later it was clear that it was part of the body of a woman who was pulled out that day formerly under the ruins of that hotel.
Across the street is the Lubiana hotel, which was tilted to the left during the earthquake, and the columns were all cracked.
This is not the case with most other buildings and hotels on the kilometer-long boulevard, which stretches from the Port of Durrës to the police station and the resort on the other side of the sandy beach, similar to Velika in Ulcinj.
Along the coast itself, on the right or left side, you could see several other buildings, which had completely collapsed, some buildings were left without stairs, facades or the entire side of the wall, but there are still many more that do not show any damage at all.
There are almost a century-old buildings on that stretch, which were not damaged in this earthquake, and it seems that the ones that have sprung up without any order during the tourist-building boom in the past 20 years have suffered the most.
So, in the same row is, for example, the hotel "Antalija" - a cool multi-storey building with kitsch golden elements, a log cabin on two floors, but also a German hotel complex with 5 stars.
The buildings in the tourist part of the city are completely reminiscent of the majority of ugly buildings, which have been built along the Montenegrin coast for decades, in violation of construction rules and with the absence of any style or sense.
The rest of the city, it seems, remained almost untouched. Only a few facades were cracked, and that in the stretch above the Port of Durrës, and the damage is not visible on the buildings in the heart of the city - the pride of Albanian tourism. earthquake left their houses without or damaged, so they are afraid to return to them.
For hours, they stood leaning on the high fence of the school, where they shouted for help to be distributed to them as soon as possible, which arrived from all over the world.
"We are hungry", shouted the children, whom their parents were lifting to the top of the fence...
The distribution of aid did not begin until 16 p.m.
"We were here in tents for days. Today they removed them and they are asking us for accommodation. Our house is crooked, we are not going back there now", said the young Ljuljeta K. while waiting for help with her family.
Most of the other residents of Dracaena, as well as residents of the town of Tuman, 35 kilometers away, were already placed in hotels by the local authorities on Friday, and some sought refuge with relatives.
The authorities returned almost 1.000 people to Kosovo, who had been living on the pearl of the southern part of the Adriatic for years.
The official list of the missing has not been published, but the authorities and numerous rescue teams have lost hope that anyone is still alive under the ruins of Durres and Tuman...
Prime Minister Edi Rama announced on Friday the black balance of this earthquake - 49 dead, 650 lightly and seriously injured, and over 2.000 people left their homes. It was announced that 701 houses were damaged in Durrës, 12 were completely destroyed, and that 176 the building suffered some damage.
This port city is a place where a major earthquake occurs once every 30 years. Thus, the city was almost leveled in an earthquake in 1926, and after that, the people of Dracula suffered significant damage and suffering in 1963 as well as in 1979...
Satak from Kosovo, the best tracker
In addition to many rescue teams from the region, specialized teams with search dogs, trained for searches in such disasters, arrived in Albania last week. Satak - a dog from Kosovo, proved to be the best tracker.
This trained dog, as the Montenegrin rescuers told "Vijesta", found at least four lifeless bodies. colleagues from Petrovac, Budva, Tivat, Kotor, Cetinje, Podgorica and Beran, he was in the team of rescuers from Montenegro. In Albania, there were also teams of dogs from Croatia, Switzerland and France.
"We are going to do what we have practiced for years and hoped would never happen", wrote the trainers of the four dogs from the Croatian team.
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