Survivors Ever Harder to Find as Workers to Continue to Search the Rubble in Syria and Turkey

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ANTAKYA — R escuers in Turkey pulled more people from the rubble early on Saturday, five days after the country’s most devastating earthquake since 1939, but hopes were fading in Turkey and Syria that many more survivors would be found.

In Kahramanmaras, close to the quake’s epicenter in southern Turkey, there were fewer visible rescue operations amid the smashed concrete mounds of fallen houses and apartment blocks, while ever more trucks rumbled through the streets shipping out debris.

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The death toll kept growing – exceeding 25,250 across southern Turkey and northwest Syria. Turkish President Tayyip Turkey, who is being questioned about earthquake response times and planning, said that authorities should have reacted sooner.

Erdogan pledged to get started on rebuilding cities “within weeks,” While declaring that hundreds of thousands of buildings are now uninhabitable, the government issued strong warnings to anyone involved in looting in quake zones.

Many people and rescue workers in Antakya claimed they saw looting.

In the rebel enclave of northwest Syria that suffered the country’s worst damage from the earthquake but where relief efforts are complicated by the more than decade-old civil war, very little aid had entered despite a pledge from Damascus to improve access.

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Antakya had body bags on the streets, and people were using masks to mask the stench of death. According to one anonymous source, ordinary citizens had joined the rescue effort without formal coordination.

“There is chaos, rubble and bodies everywhere,” He said. His group had been working over night to reach the university teacher who called them from the rubble. He stated that by morning, she had stopped responding.

“There are still collapsed buildings untouched in the side streets,” He added.

Rescue workers climbed between concrete slabs in Kahramanmaras to reach a 5-year-old girl. They lifted her on a stretcher and wrapped her in foil. “God is great.”

They believed that two other survivors were still alive under the same rubble mound.

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However, rescue efforts are still not proving successful. On Saturday, a woman who had been rescued in Kirikhan, Turkey on Friday, died in hospital.

This video, shot in Hatay Turkey, shows the dangers of such operations. It shows how a partially collapsed structure suddenly fell and buried a rescuer in an avalanche before his colleagues could drag him out.

Turkish Vice President Fuat OKtay stated that approximately 80,000 people were being treated at hospitals and 1.05 million were staying in temporary shelters after the earthquakes.

People waited in the region for information about their loved ones who were missing. Soner Zamir, Sevde Nur Zmir were seen squatting in front of the Kahramanmaras building where his grandparents and parents lived on Saturday.

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“Some people came out yesterday but now there is no hope. This building is too shattered for life,” Zamir said.

NEW GRAVES

Gaziantep’s hillside was covered with new graves, some of which were marked by flowers or small Turkish flags waving in the breeze.

A young woman held her face as she squatted beside one. Another woman collapsed in tears as a boy tried comforting her. Rows of graves had been dug and were waiting to be filled by the city as it prepared to bury its deceased.

Survivors of the unaffected feared for their lives, and basic infrastructure was destroyed.

“If people don’t die here under the rubble, they’ll die from injuries, if not they will die from infection. There is no toilet here. It is a big problem,” Gizem is a rescue worker from Sanliurfa’s southeast province.

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Martin Griffiths (UNH chief of aid), described the earthquake in his description as “the worst event in 100 years in this region,” praised Turkey’s emergency response, saying it was his experience that people in disaster zones were always disappointed early in relief efforts.

In an interview with Sky News, he stated that “I am sure (the death toll) will double or more.”

ERDOGAN

Erdogan was preparing for the June elections, which were to be held in Turkey. This happened at a time Erdogan’s popularity was already declining due to rising living costs and a weakening Turkish currency.

Even before the quake, the vote was seen as Erdogan’s toughest challenge in two decades in power. Erdogan has been calling for solidarity after the disaster and condemning what he called “negative campaigns for political interest.”

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Opposition politicians and residents of the earthquake zone have accused the government early on of slow and insufficient relief. Critics have also argued that the army, which was the main response to a 1999 earthquake, wasn’t fast enough.

Erdogan has acknowledged some problems with Turkey’s initial response, notably getting aid into a region where transport links were damaged but said the situation was subsequently brought under control.

There are questions being asked about the soundness and stability of buildings within the earthquake-hit zone.

Kahramanmaras state prosecutors said that they would investigate the collapses of buildings and any irregularities in construction. As he waited for his flight to Istanbul, police detained a contractor who had built a 12 story apartment block in Hatay.

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Monday’s 7.8 magnitude quake, with several powerful aftershocks across Turkey and Syria, ranks as the world’s seventh-deadliest natural disaster this century, approaching the 31,000 killed by a quake in neighboring Iran in 2003.

With a death toll so far of 21,848 inside Turkey, it is the country’s deadliest earthquake since 1939. Syria is home to more than 3,500 people who have died. Deaths have not been updated since Friday.

SYRIA

People in Syria waited for news from their family members while they sat solemnly at the feet of mounds made of concrete and twisted steel.

Many people living in rebel-held northwest Syria were already displaced from other areas of the country, but they are now homeless.

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“On the first day we slept in the streets. The second day we slept in our cars. Then we slept in other people’s homes,” Ramadan, 28, said that his family had fled eastern Syria for Jandaris. Jandaris was badly damaged by the earthquake.

Since Monday, hundreds of planeloads with aid have reached areas that are held by the Syrian government. But little has reached the northwest of the worst-affected region.

Normal times see U.N. delivering aid to the region via one checkpoint across the border with Turkey. Damascus denies that this policy violates its sovereignty.

(Additional reporting by Umit Betas in Antakya and Orhan Coskun, Ece Toksabay, Huseyin Hayatsever, Ece Toksabay, and Huseyin Hamatsever in Adana; Writing by Clarence Fernandez, Angus McDowall; Editing by Frances Kerry