The sudden death of a girl in the city of Kahramanmaras, Turkey, was left behind in the wake of Monday’s earthquake

The body of a 4-year-old girl wrapped in a pink blanket was brought out Wednesday from the wreckage of a building in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras. She is one of the latest victims of Monday’s huge earthquake.

Elsewhere, excavators dug out the body of man believed to be a Syrian refugee in his 40s, who seemed to be on a mattress, like many of those who died after the quake struck around 4 a.m.

In a neighboring building, also collapsed, rescuers were digging down from the top to try to reach one or possibly two people thought to be alive. A generator was brought up to power a pneumatic hand-operated drill; the man directing it cleared away the rubble with his bare hands.

He appeared to have spotted signs of life beneath the wreckage, but rescuers sent away a waiting ambulance, saying there was still a lot of work to do.

More than two days after an earthquake and aftershocks left a trail of death and destruction, rescue teams were still searching for survivors in the rubble.

Heavy machinery has been increasingly brought into areas where a day earlier cautious searchers relied on their hands to dig through the rubble. The risk posed to those trapped alive must be weighed against their chances of surviving many more hours in the bitter cold.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/europe/kahramanmaras-turkey-quake-rescue-efforts-intl-cmd/index.html

Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Istanbul: “Is the situation going well for families” after the September 17th Earthquake

There are 350 bodies in the hospital’s morgue that weren’t collected by relatives because of the death of the family member, claims a man volunteering at the hospital.

As Turkey continues to reel in shock and the death toll climbs, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday arrived in the country’s southern Kahramanmaras region, the epicenter of Monday’s deadly earthquake, to take in the devastation for himself.

He was accompanied by officials and visited an emergency relief area. Some of the thousands of families who have lost homes will be housed in the white tents in the sports stadium.

In a televised briefing from the relief center, Erdogan said the government’s target was to rebuild the Kahramanmaras region “in one year” and that people would get help with emergency housing.

We can’t let our citizens stay in the streets. “Our state is using all its resources with AFAD and municipalities. We will continue to do that.

He acknowledged the government’s initial response “had some problems” in terms of natural gas supply and roads, but said the situation was “under control.” The government is planning to give 10,000 Turkish liras to families who have been impacted by the earthquake.

The city of Kahramanmaras has not been unaffected by the earthquakes, but newer areas higher up the valley have suffered less obvious damage.

Many people are heard crying by the crumbled buildings where their families lived until disaster struck.

The pictures of loved ones under the rubble were clutched by a few, as an act of remembrance, rather than as hope for their rescue, and they said that they were gone.

In the week since a magnitude 7.8 earthquake and a series of powerful aftershocks hit Turkey and Syria, leveling cities like Islahiye, over 36,000 people have died. Many Turkish politicians and experts say the toll is likely far higher.

A three-month state of emergency has been declared in 10 Turkish provinces, and aid agencies have warned of “catastrophic” repercussions in northwest Syria, where millions of vulnerable and displaced people were already relying on humanitarian support.

ISLAHIYE, Turkey — When volunteer rescue workers pulled Derya Demir, 44, from the rubble of her collapsed apartment in the southeastern Turkish city of Islahiye last Tuesday, her arms were wrapped around her four children.

Their lives had been destroyed by the weight of their apartment block, but in the last moments, they held each other tight.

Melike Bayar, the youngest sister of Demir, is crying while looking at the ruins of the apartment building. Semra and her mother are still under the rubble. They have yet to be found. Kamil, Sakine’s husband, survived because he was in a hospital for dialysis treatment on the night of the quake.

Younger relatives, including 26-year-old Mehmet Gezici and his wife, Zinan Gezici, 23, who flew in from Paris to help after the quake, are less optimistic. They believe that both Semra and Sakine are dead.

The earthquake-related deaths of a building in the devastated city Adiyaman: Turkish and Syrian governments are underestimating the scale of the tragedy

Many blame the scale of the tragedy on a construction industry that runs on corruption and a lack of implemented regulations. At least a dozen building contractors have been arrested by the Turkish government for their alleged role in the deaths.

On Saturday, Garo Paylan, a representative of the opposition People’s Democratic Party from Diyarbakir, one of the cities affected by the quake, tweeted from the devastated city of Adiyaman that the government was undercounting the dead. There are as many as 200,000 people under the rubble. Search teams in both Turkey and Syria believe the hope of recovering people alive at this point is slim.

At the Islahiye apartment building site, dozens of families are still waiting. They sit on black plastic chairs and look at the rubble. The air is thick with the smell of corpses, of smoke, of chalky concrete. The clothes people have been wearing for the past week have been covered in building dust and ash.

The first winch, necessary to lift concrete, arrived Wednesday but was unable to lift 100 tons. Six days after the earthquake the second arrived. The volunteer crews only made it down to the third floor in a week.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/14/1156503843/turkey-earthquake-deaths-building-construction

Derya and Hidayet Demir, the youngest children of a Colaklar family, were born in September 1993 after the Collapse of the Demir family

The members of the family of Derya Demir are all Kurds and originally from Colaklar, which was hit by the earthquake. The first to arrive was her brother Hidayet, 45, the middle of the six Demir siblings and the only brother among the bunch.

When asked how he is doing, he says, “Incredibly badly,” speaking in a shocked monotone. As he speaks, his eyes dart back to the collapsed building where his sister and mother still lie.

People told Hidayet that they had heard children’s screams when they heard the direction of the apartment. For at least some time after the earthquake, the family believes, the children were alive. They think help came too little, too late.

As they wait for crews to find their mother and sister, they warm themselves around a fire that has been burning for a week next to the site.

They talk of their loved ones in the present tense as they try to share happy memories. The four young children, and Derya, Sakine, and Semra — all, in their telling, still exist.