‘You have to be trusted to be there’: George Butler on sketching devastation

George Butler, capturing scenes from the town of Bucha in the Kyiv region of Ukraine, which had recently been liberated from the Russians. Photograph: Paul Grover/Avoz

It was the fifth day after this month’s devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake when George Butler started drawing the Buket apartment block at the heart of the ancient southern Turkish city of Antakya.

A few miles from the quake’s epicentre, the eight storey building with four flats on each floor had collapsed when the building next to it fell into its northern wall. As Butler made his drawing, only 20 people had been recovered from the rubble. Many, many more were trapped, most likely dead. And this was before this week’s two additional earthquakes, one of 6.4 the other of 5.8 magnitude, hit the Hatay province of which Antakya is the capital.