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

Article content

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.

Article content

Article content

The death toll kept growing – exceeding 25,250 across southern Turkey and northwest Syria. Turkish President Tayyip Erdoan, in question over earthquake planning and response times, stated that authorities should have reacted quicker.

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 residents in Antakya, Turkey, claimed that they witnessed 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.

Article content

Antakya was awash with body bags and residents were covering their faces with masks in an attempt to hide the death stench. Unofficial coordination was not possible because ordinary people were involved in the rescue effort, according to one person who declined his identity.

“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 reached a girl aged five years old at a Kahramanmaras building and burrowed among concrete slabs to reach her. They then lifted her onto a stretcher wrapped in foil and began chanting. “God is great.”

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

Article content

However, rescue efforts are still not proving successful. A woman who was saved in Kirikhan, Turkey on Friday, died at the hospital on Saturday.

This video, shot in Hatay Turkey, shows the danger in 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.

According to Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay, approximately 80,000 people were receiving treatment in hospitals, while 1.05million were left homeless 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.

Article content

“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 wind.

A young woman held her face as she squatted beside one. One after another, a young woman began to sob as a boy attempted to comfort her. Rows of graves had been dug and were waiting to be filled by the city as it prepared to bury its deceased.

Survivors feared the worst and had their basic infrastructure 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.

Article content

Martin Griffiths, U.N. aid chief, described the earthquake 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.

Sky News interviewed him and he said that “I am sure (the death toll) will double or more.”

ERDOGAN

Erdogan is preparing for national elections by June. He was doing this at a moment when Erdogan’s popularity was already falling due to the rising cost of living, as well as a plummeting Turkish currency.

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

Article content

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 stated that they will investigate the collapses and any irregularities made in their construction. As he waited for his flight to Istanbul, police detained a contractor who had built a 12 story apartment block in Hatay.

Article content

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

Syria was a country where people waited in silence for the news of their loved ones, while mounds of crushed concrete were piled up and twisted metal stood still.

Many civilians in rebel-held north Syria have been forced to flee from areas that were seized by the government forces during the ongoing civil conflict. They are now being made homeless.

Article content

“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 Sleiman (28), whose family fled eastern Syria to Jandaris after the earthquake. Jandaris was severely damaged.

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.

In normal times, U.N. provides aid to the region over the border with Turkey via one checkpoint. 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