As the desperate hunt for survivors from two strong earthquakes and a string of deadly aftershocks continued for a second day, the death toll in Turkey and Syria surpassed 5,000 people.
The earthquakes overturned more than 6,000 structures. More than 24,000 rescuers, some from other countries, were searching through enormous piles of wreckage in Turkey alone for signs of life.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, declared on Tuesday that “we are confronting one of the biggest tragedies not just of the history of the Turkish Republic but also of… the globe.”
Small triumphs were achieved during the great catastrophe. Onur Dobuoglu, 25, was freed from concrete slabs in Kahramanmaras after being stuck for 30 hours. Dobuoglu, who had fractured arms and feet, was carried by ambulance to the hospital.
According to Turgut Dolanbay, a member of the rescue team, the team concentrated on the scene when they heard Dobuoglu calling out. Sefa Gedik, his uncle, hugged rescuers after seeing his nephew again.
We want everyone to be saved, and may Allah help everyone, Gedik remarked.
According to Turgut Dolanbay, a member of the rescue team, the team concentrated on the scene when they heard Dobuoglu calling out. Sefa Gedik, his uncle, hugged rescuers after seeing his nephew again.
We want everyone to be saved, and may Allah help everyone, Gedik remarked.
Updates on rescue efforts:
According to Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay, over 380,000 survivors have sought sanctuary in hotels or government shelters.
According to local news media, more than a dozen persons were under investigation for allegedly making “provocative” social media posts about the earthquake to spread “fear and panic,” according to the authorities.
Businessman Angelo Zen, 50, of Venice, according to Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, is believed to be missing in Turkey. According to family members, Zen may have visited the earthquake zone.
According to Turkish officials, the earthquake wrecked some of the old Gaziantep Castle’s bastions. Originally built in the second century, the castle.
The Ghana Football Association reported that Christian Atsu, a former striker with Chelsea and Newcastle in the British Premier League, had been successfully extricated from the wreckage and was being treated. The 31-year-old Atsu joined a Turkish team last year.
Turkish Airlines reported on Tuesday that it sent around 12,000 volunteers in 80 flights to the seismic zone in southern Turkey. The flights would continue for as long as necessary, according to CEO Bilal Eksi.
After being delivered under debris, a baby is saved
A wailing baby was found by residents searching through a collapsed building in northwest Syria, according to family members and a doctor on Tuesday. Her mother appears to have given birth to her while trapped under the debris. They claimed that the newborn girl’s mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya, who perished in the building collapse, was still connected to the child via her umbilical cord. In the small hamlet of Jinderis, close to the Turkish border, the infant was the only member of her immediate family to survive, according to a relative, Ramadan Sleiman, who spoke to the Associated Press.
Given how much her fever had plummeted, the doctor, Hani Maarouf, assumed the baby had been born some hours before being discovered.
He claimed that if the girl had been left for one additional hour, she would have perished.
Earthquakes in California similar to those in Turkey
According to Robert Muir-Wood, chief research officer at the risk management company Moody’s RMS, there are not many significant differences between California and Turkey in terms of earthquake frequency. However, California should experience more earthquakes than Turkey. The majority of Turkey’s large earthquakes are “strike-slip and on a vast plate boundary,” he claimed. Strike-slip faults are those that shift horizontally.
While earthquake household insurance penetration is higher in Turkey than in California, Muir-Wood noted that California has far better building code compliance.
In California, he asserted, such earthquakes “should be at least twice as frequent.”
Significantly damaged natural gas and electric infrastructure
According to Fatih Dönmez, minister of energy and natural resources, the earthquakes severely damaged the transmission and distribution systems for natural gas and electricity. Major power provider Enerjisa and state-owned pipeline operator BOTA both stated that they were assessing and fixing damage continuously “despite very tough weather and terrain circumstances.”
Although some repair work has been finished, certain areas are still without electricity due to safety concerns, according to Engerjis.
30 hours after the collapse, survivors were extricated from the debris
The Daily Sabah said that a 16-year-old girl was freed from a five-story building’s rubble after spending over 22 hours stuck there in Turkey’s southernmost province of Hatay. Nearly 30 hours after the 7.7-magnitude earthquake, five more survivors were discovered in the central Antakya neighborhood. Four further victims were also found by rescue teams in two additional nearby wreckages. Teams managed to rescue a mother and her two daughters alive from underneath a structure a few hours later.
A young toddler and his older sister were pulled from another debris by rescuers, who reported hearing their cries of “I’m afraid, I can’t get out” as they hurried to liberate them.
Syria’s suffering has no end in sight
The earthquake in northwest Syria destroyed cities in a region that was already under siege. A civil war that has lasted for more than ten years has caused millions of people to be displaced. Over 1,450 people have died as a result of the earthquake in Syria, and more are anticipated. Amid the battle, sanctions made reconstruction challenging, and the work only grew more arduous.
The head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Khaled Hboubati, made a plea for the lifting of the economic and military sanctions against Syria.
Hboubati stated on Tuesday that “we need heavy equipment, ambulances, and firefighting vehicles to continue to rescue and remove the rubble.” To do this, sanctions on Syria must be lifted as soon as possible. “Our volunteers are prepared, but we are short on supplies.”
Turkey proclaims a three-month emergency
In 10 southern provinces, Erdogan proclaimed a three-month state of emergency. The nation has lowered its flags at half-staff as it recognizes seven days of national mourning. Of the 85 million people living in the country, he claimed that 13 million were negatively impacted by the calamity.
The fact that more than 8,000 of our citizens have so far been saved from the wreckage is our greatest comfort, according to Erdogan.
Children are among the most at risk
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) stated that its immediate priorities include ensuring that children and families have access to safe drinking water and sanitation services, reuniting children with families, providing “psychological first aid,” and having schools—many of which are currently being used as temporary housing—reopened for educational purposes. Families who have been uprooted in northwest Syria and Syrian refugees living in unofficial settlements in Turkey are among the most vulnerable, according to UNICEF spokesman James Elder.
Communities are battling a cholera outbreak that is still active as well as a lot of rain and snow, according to Elder. This earthquake is completely intolerable in the context of the struggle, which has lasted for more than ten years.
Winter cold makes it difficult to find the living
Colder-than-freezing weather and nearly 200 aftershocks made it dangerous to sift through fragile structures to locate survivors.
In Antakya, the provincial capital of Hatay, Nurgul Atay told The Associated Press that she could hear her mother’s voice through the debris of a fallen building, but that her attempts to enter the wreckage had been fruitless in the absence of rescue personnel and heavy machinery.
If only we could lift the concrete slab, Atay replied, “We’d be able to get to her.” My mother, who is 70 years old, won’t be able to endure this for very long.
Voices that had been crying out from the rubble stopped when the mammoth aid operation finally made it to the devastated towns.
In the Turkish hamlet of Nurdag, Ali Silo, whose two relatives could not be saved, claimed, “We could hear their voices, they were pleading for help.”
Numerous thousands are now homeless
Thousands of people sought refuge in sports facilities or fair halls in the Hatay province of Turkey, while others camped out in the cold around fires. People sought shelter in shopping complexes, stadiums, mosques, and community centers in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, which is the provincial capital and is located around 20 miles from the epicenter.
On the Syrian side, the impacted region is split between territory under government control and the final opposition-held outpost, which is encircled by government forces with Russian support. According to rescue workers, overburdened hospitals were overflowing with the injured. According to the Syrian American Medical Society, other structures, including a maternity hospital, were still standing but were no longer physically sound and had to be demolished.
SAMS President, Dr. Amjad Rass, stated, “We’ve been receiving earthquake casualties as they come in, all while simultaneously working to ensure the wellbeing of our approximately 1,700 staff members in Syria, and the 90 at the epicenter near Gaziantep.
