More than 5,200 dead and 22,000 injured as rescue teams work around the clock after devastating earthquakes rocked the region
The seismic catastrophe on the Syrian-Turkish border has turned into a devastation of epic proportions. Early this morning, authorities have recorded more than 5,200 deaths and a number of injuries of more than 22,000 people. The health situation has reached a borderline level, despite the deployment of dozens of mobile hospitals trying to discharge emergencies from medical centers, absolutely saturated with an avalanche of patients with heartbreaking injuries. Dozens of NGOs are providing aid in the vast affected area, where, according to the latest estimates, a total of 6,800 buildings have been destroyed. Of these, 2,800 collapsed almost immediately in the first earthquake, which occurred at dawn and measured 7.8 degrees on the Richter scale, and others did so due to the unusual aftershock recorded at noon; actually a second quake that reached 7.5 degrees.
The number of deaths is increasing as the hours pass, but the worst thing right now is the uncertainty about the number of people trapped under millions of tons of rubble, in buildings that collapsed on themselves, crumbling bridges and houses reduced from six and seven heights to piles of rubble. The missing number runs into the thousands, according to information from local media. Forty-five countries, including seventeen Europeans, have already mobilized the aid needed by the Turks and Syrians. Two planes carrying assistance and humanitarian aid have taken off from Spain and aid units have been launched. The United States has also sent dozens of urban rescue teams. Even Russia and Ukraine, facing a bitter war, have sent relief brigades. A massive search and rescue operation is underway. Some 79,000 troops have been working continuously in the early hours of the morning using guide dogs, cranes, excavators and whatever means at their disposal, which are inadequate, to try to save as many lives as possible.
To date, nearly 10,000 people have been rescued alive from the bowels of hell. However, hopes are fading as time passes, although the rescue of victims such as Deniz Kaya, a survivor after 24 hours under the rubble of an apartment building in Osmaniye, gives the rescuers much needed encouragement. Deniz has become the face and cross of catastrophe. Rescue workers heard a slight noise under a concrete mountain. They dug for five hours without a break. And the man seemed almost unharmed. However, the joy was short-lived. The lifeless bodies of his wife and his one and a half year old daughter were found next to him.
Thousands of families across Turkey are wondering where are relatives and friends who don’t answer their mobile phones, show no sign of life or who haven’t been seen since the earth shook. The low temperatures don’t help. Nor the new quakes. Another 5-degree earthquake was felt in central Turkey on Tuesday morning. The war in Syria is also inopportune and hinders movement in some affected areas. Setbacks are added to other setbacks. The most pessimistic predictions have been made by the World Health Organization, which believes the final death toll could be as high as 20,000. “We may fear that the death toll will rise significantly,” said Rick Brennan, WHO’s emergency director for the Eastern Mediterranean. “Unfortunately, with earthquakes we always see the same thing: reports of the initial number of deaths and injuries will increase over the next week,” a spokeswoman for the institution in Europe added.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan believes the country is facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. He has declared seven days of mourning.
Earth battered eastern Turkey and northern Syria on Monday as it had not done in decades. As the whole world prepared for the cold snap and heavy snowfall, an earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale shook all this vast frontier, all strewn with death, destruction and thousands of survivors frozen in the open, terrified in the middle of an apocalyptic landscape and under the threat of new aftershocks. The second most intense reached 7.6 degrees; the third, last night, was 5, and the experts warned that they will not stop for several days.
The epicenter was located in the Turkish district of Pazarcik, Kahramanmaras province and near Gaziantep, a city of two million inhabitants, and hit the provinces of Malatya, Sanliurfa, Osmaniye, Hatay, Adana and Diyarbakir. Earthquakes know no borders and in Syria Idlib, Aleppo, Hama and Latakia were hit.
The first major quake occurred at 4:17 AM, when people were asleep. It was devastating and was felt in several countries of the region. Calling for national unity, the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, went to the headquarters of the Center for Disaster and Emergency Management (AFAD) and declared that “this is the biggest disaster since the 1939 Erzincan earthquake”. That earthquake was also 7.8 degrees, took place in the northeast of the country and is estimated to have killed more than 30,000. In 1999, another powerful earthquake measuring 7.4 was recorded in Izmit, 100 kilometers east of Istanbul, and killed more than 17,000 people.
The strength of the earthquake, the number of cities affected and the number of collapsed buildings, 6,800 according to one of the latest counts, and two of them hospitals, mean that this time there are also fears of a very high number of victims. Asked during an interview on the Al Jazeera channel about the magnitude of the disaster, Professor Mustafa Erdik, from Istanbul’s Bogazici University Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, said that “one of the reasons why the number of casualties was so high was the poor quality of the buildings.” After the 1999 earthquake, laws were changed so that construction followed earthquake-resistance codes, but these properties remain outnumbered in parts of the country such as the affected area.
Turkey has extensive experience in this field and immediately mobilized rescue teams. Authorities also raised the alert level to 4, opening the doors for international aid, which was immediately activated. Erdogan revealed that in addition to the members of NATO and the European Union, 45 other countries have offered their help in this difficult time for Turkey.
Spain was one of the first to respond by announcing the dispatch of two aircraft, one with the Military Emergency Unit specialized in rescuing people in case of natural disasters (UME) and a second with the ERICAM unit, firefighters specialized in rescuing of the Autonomous Community of Madrid. The destination of the aircraft is Adana, from where they will try to reach the devastated areas by land.
The priority in these cases is always to save lives, to pull the survivors out of the rubble. AFAD’s general director of earthquakes and risk reduction, Orhan Tatar, reported mid-afternoon Monday that his teams had already reached “all affected areas”. It was a difficult road due to the poor condition in which many roads had been left, and the major airports in this part of the country were rendered useless by the runway damage.
Every minute counts in situations like this and miraculous moments have been witnessed where entire families were rescued from the rubble of what used to be their homes. Footage shot in Gaziantep showed people in whatever warm clothes they could have saved in the middle of the night, getting into cars and looking at neighboring buildings for fear of an aftershock. The mosques also became places of refuge for the residents. Added to the difficulties of such a situation are “extremely severe weather conditions,” Vice President Fuat Oktay lamented.
Those who remain buried are a priority, but beyond that there are also thousands upon thousands of Turks and Syrians who, in many cases, have lost everything and are in dire need of refuge amid a climate characterized by snow, rain and icy winds. An accident like this is being suffered firsthand across the country and the Ministry of Education has declared the closure of schools for the week “to focus all resources on helping the victims and as a sign of mourning for the deceased. ”
Turkey is the face of response and Syria, where authorities say more than 800 people are dead, is the cross. This earthquake is yet another setback for a country that has been at war since 2011 and is especially hard on Idlib, a province that is home to millions of people displaced by the conflict.
Images circulated by the media showed the lack of equipment and residents clearing debris with their own hands. Humanitarian organizations warn of this lack of response capacity, but internal security problems, especially in Idlib, make it difficult to get help.
Source: La Verdad
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