The Los Angeles County Fire Department’s heavy urban search and rescue team heading to Turkey to help in the disaster has found people alive when responding to past international earthquakes, an official said Monday.

“One of the most important things is for the people to have hope,” Deputy Fire Chief Tom Ewald said, adding, “For the folks impacted, every little bit makes a difference.”

The Los Angeles team is one of two being sent by the U.S. The other is out of Virginia.

Ewald said at a news conference that in addition to expertise and equipment for heavy rescues in reinforced concrete, the team will also have medical equipment and doctors who can perform amputations on people who are trapped so they can be rescued.

The Los Angeles County team, which specializes in earthquakes, has deployed to disasters in other countries, including the 2017 earthquake in Mexico City, officials said.

The team will take everything it needs for a base camp. The hope is that it is in Turkey and operational within 18 hours, Ewald said Monday evening.

“Through history, there’s been rescues made out to the 10-day mark and even slightly beyond that,” Ewald said.

Australia pledged $10 million in humanitarian assistance to Turkey and Syria on Tuesday following a 7.8-magnitude earthquake and a strong aftershock that have killed thousands of people.

It pledged $7 million to Turkey and $3 million to Syria, in part through partner agencies like the Red Cross and Red Crescent and UNICEF, Pat Conroy, Australia’s minister for defense industry and minister of international development, said in a joint statement with the country’s foreign affairs minister.

New Zealand also announced $1.5 million in assistance to the two countries Tuesday, which it called an initial contribution.

Other countries have also pledged aid to Turkey and Syria after the earthquake struck early Monday. More than 3,700 people have died in the two countries, officials have said.

As rescuers search for survivors following a 7.8-magnitutde earthquake that struck Turkey, more than 6,000 buildings in the country have collapsed, state-run media reported.

Yunus Sezer, the head of the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency, said 6,217 buildings have collapsed in the earthquake and aftershocks, according to the Anadolu Agency, a state-run news agency.

More than 3,700 people have died in Turkey and Syria, officials have said. Countries all over the world, including the U.S., have offered help and search and rescue teams.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said it’s the country’s largest disaster since 1939, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country. Monday’s earthquake was also followed by a 7.5-magnitude aftershock.

Two people in the Turkey province of Sanliurfa have been pulled from collapsed buildings by rescuers 18 and 22 hours after a powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country, the Anadolu news agency in Turkey reported.

The videos posted by the Anadolu Agency, which is state-run, were said to show a person being rescued from a collapsed six-story building 18 hours after the earthquake and a woman being rescued 22 hours after it.

Buildings in the area where a devastating earthquake struck in Turkey on Monday, killing more than 3,700 people, were vulnerable to earthquakes, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

“It’s difficult to watch this tragedy unfold, especially since we’ve known for a long time about how poorly the buildings in the region tend to behave in earthquakes,” USGS scientist David Wald said in an article on its website. “An earthquake this size has the potential to be damaging anywhere in the world, but many structures in this region are particularly vulnerable.”

Also contributing to the intense shaking was how shallow the two largest of the earthquakes were — the main one was 11 miles deep, and a 7.5-magnitude aftershock was just over 6 miles deep, it said.

“Shallow” earthquakes are considered those with depth of 70 kilometers or less, or around 43½ miles, according to the USGS. Intermediate are those between around 43½ miles and 186½ miles, and deep are between that and nearly 435 miles, according to the agency.

The region has older buildings with older types of concrete, which were not designed to absorb so much shaking, the USGS said.

Three tectonic plates, the Anatolia, Arabia and Africa plates, interact with one another in the region where the earthquakes struck, according to the agency, and more aftershocks are expected.