Sedat, the Epicenter of the Most-Poor Earthquake in Japan, is Still Inside: His Body and His Mother’s

Turkey’s government said search and rescue teams have pulled more than 8,000 people from underneath the rubble of thousands of toppled buildings in the past two days. But worries grew that survivors may succumb to their injuries or hypothermia, due to worsening weather conditions in the region.

The epicenter of the earthquake that struck southern Turkey and Syria was the most powerful one in a decade, the AP reported. More than 20,000 people were killed by a wave in Japan after an earthquake.

Erdogan and aid workers said the scale of the quake was so large that it was difficult to reach everyone everywhere. “Everyone will be left in the streets,” Erdogan said.

I think my son is still alive, because I know he is inside. She told NPR that his brother found him with his hands. Hours later, as diggers chipped away at the ruins of the building, rescuers found Sedat’s body and wrapped it in a blanket for his mother to say goodbye.

Building standards in Syria are lacking in the wake of the September 11 earthquake, according to a senior engineer at Boaziçi University

The conflict has isolated many areas of Syria and complicated efforts to get aid in. The United Nations said the first earthquake- related aid convoy crossed from Turkey to northwestern Syria on Friday, a day after an aid shipment was supposed to arrive.

The disaster compounded suffering in a region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war, which has displaced millions of people within the country and left them dependent on aid. The fighting sent millions more to seek refuge in Turkey.

More than 380,000 people have been displaced by this disaster, and Turkey’s emergency management agency has set up more than 70,000 tents to house them.

The earthquake that hit the region left tens of thousands injured, as well as a huge number of deaths.

Most of Turkey is in the middle of two faults, the East and North Anatolian Fault. The tectonic plate that carries Arabia, including Syria, is moving northwards and colliding with the southern rim of Eurasia, which is squeezing Turkey out towards the west, says David Rothery, a geoscientist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK. “Turkey is moving west about 2 centimetres per year along the East Anatolian Fault,” he adds. Half the length of the fault is lit up by earthquakes.

More than 17,000 people died in an earthquake in Turkey in 1999, and more than half a million people were homeless. New building codes were introduced by the Turkish government in the wake of the tragedy. However, many of the buildings affected by this week’s quake were built before 2000, says Mustafa Erdik, a civil engineer at Boğaziçi University, Turkey.

Falling bricks and masonry are the cause of earthquakes deaths. According to the US Geological Survey, many people in Turkey who were affected by the earthquake live in structures that are extremely likely to be damaged by shaking, with unreinforced brick masonry and low-rise concrete frames.

Over 11 years of conflict has made it impossible to enforce building standards in Syria. The earthquake caused buildings to collapse in the northwestern regions of Syria. Some buildings in Syria that have been damaged in the war have been rebuilt using low-quality materials. “They might have fallen down more readily than things that were built at somewhat greater expense. We’ve yet to find out,” he adds.

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 of being trapped alive needs to be taken into account against the chance of surviving long in the cold.

A child’s body wrapped in a blanket was brought out from the debris of a building on Wednesday. She’s one of the latest young victims of Monday’s massive quake.

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.

There are 350 bodies in the hospital’s morgue that won’t be collected by relatives because they have died, according to a man volunteering at the hospital.

A televised briefing on earthquakes and disasters in Kahramanmaras, Turkey, during the first day of the 11-day earthquake

Flanked by officials, he visited an emergency relief area set up by the country’s disaster management agency, AFAD. Row after row of shining white tents could be seen in the sports stadium, destined to house some of the thousands of families who’ve lost their homes.

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.

When asked if Erdogan’s government has done enough to help the victims, Soleymez says, “They’ve done what they’re able to do. This is not a time to talk about politics — it’s a time to help people who need it.”

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 the families 10,000 Turkish liras to help them.

Very few buildings in the city of Kahramanmaras have been left unscathed by the quakes, although those in mostly newer neighborhoods higher up the valley have suffered less obvious damage.

At the bottom of the city, many people could be heard crying and lamenting by the tumbled buildings where they or their relatives lived until disaster struck.

A group of people held pictures of their loved ones who are under the rubble and said they are gone as a gesture of remembrance.

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.

Rescue crews worked through freezing temperatures to pull bodies from the rubble of thousands of buildings that have collapsed throughout southern Turkey and northern Syria. The 72-hour mark since Monday’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake has now passed, a critical time window that experts say is when most survivors from disasters are found.

The Erdoshakhak-Alama disaster unfolds in Turkey, with a boy rescued from the rubble after the Nepal earthquake

Istanbul’s stock exchange closed until Feb. 15 after initial trading showed rapid declines, triggering a circuit breaker when declines reached 7%. The Turkish economy was already reeling from out-of-control inflation.

The crowd chants “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for God is Great. Volunteers and civil defense groups — themselves earthquake survivors — pull a boy out from the rubble alive in rebel-held northwestern Syria.

NPR was able to get in touch with him on Wednesday. There is a part of Assad’s regime that is under the control of the opposition. He claimed that a number of buildings there have collapsed. People are waiting for help in the cold. Aftershocks have made buildings still standing unlivable.

humanitarian aid and international aid have not appeared 72 hours after the catastrophic earthquake in Nepal, he said.

Civil defense groups are carrying out rescue efforts while civilians try to help. Everyone is waiting for international rescue and aid just to be able to process what’s happened.

The 11,000 families who were homeless after the earthquake are all in the rebel-held part of Syria. The United Nations says up to 2,000 deaths and thousands more injured have been reported.

There are many people trapped under the rubble. Stories of miraculous rescues, like that of a baby girl born under the rubble, are a bullhorn for what’s at stake.

“The situation remains grim in north-west Syria where only five percent of reported sites are being covered by search and rescue,” the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report.

People are digging with their own hands in many areas, but the situation is particularly dire in northwestern Syria, where there is little heavy machinery to lift rubble. There are fuel shortages in hospitals.

Erdospheric Response in Turkey After the 1999 September 11 Earthquake: Prime Minister Erdogan and the Narli-Naroli Family

But critics like Ozel point out that national funds meant for natural disasters like this one were instead spent on highway construction projects managed by associates of Erdogan and his coalition government.

In 1999, more than 18,000 people were killed in a catastrophic earthquake in northwestern Turkey, and the tax was imposed to keep money away from disaster prevention and relief.

Ozel says it’s not just a “near-total incompetence on preparedness on the part of the government” in responding to this week’s earthquake. The government is making it almost impossible for other organizations, civil society, citizens, themselves and mayors to actually help make things worse.

The centralization of the country’s government has meant that there are a lot of restrictions on how individual cities and aid organizations can operate. Turkey’s embassies, along with an array of nongovernmental organizations and cultural associations are collecting donations around the world.

With an election expected by June, Ozel says Erdogan has already been weakened by out-of-control inflation in Turkey. “I would expect the government to actually be one of the victims under the rubble of this earthquake,” Ozel predicts.

A high school student has been helping with the aid effort for three days. Schools in Turkey have been ordered closed to mourn the victims of the earthquake so that people like Korkmaz can help out.

“Eighteen semitrucks have arrived and are being sent to the earthquake zone.” They’re filled with blankets, clothes, but there is a more urgent need for food,” he says, as he loads a box underneath a banner with the image of Erdogan hanging from the ceiling. We can get it to them, but it doesn’t matter. People there need food.”

Dramatic rescues were being broadcast on Turkish television, including the rescue of the Narli family in central Kahramanmaras 133 hours after the 7.8-magnitude temblor struck Monday. First, Nehir Narli was saved, then both of her parents.

On the same day a family of five were rescued from a mound of debris in the town of Nurdagi in Gaziantep province. The rescuers chanted, “God is Great!” As the last family member was lifted to safety, the father was in the air.

The tragedy of a girl killed in a collapsed building: “Islahiye is a little too weary to survive” — a distraught father and his daughter

“In some parts of our settlements close to the fault line, we can say that almost no stone was left standing,” he said earlier Saturday from Diyarbakir.

The woman in her 20s was recovered from the rubble after another person was rescued from the same site in the same hour. Ahead of her rescue, police announced that people shouldn’t cheer or clap in order to not interfere with other rescue efforts nearby. She was covered in a thermal blanket on a stretcher. Rescuers were hugging. Some shouted that God is great.

A father and his daughter were extricated from a debris site in the town of Islahiye, in Gaziantep province, just an hour after a child was recovered in the province of Hatay.

The rescues brought shimmers of joy amid overwhelming devastation days after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake and a powerful aftershock hours later caused thousands of buildings to collapse, killing more than 25,000, injuring another 80,000 and leaving millions homeless.

Not everything ended so well. Rescuers in Hatay province in eastern Turkey rushed to save a girl trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building. She was dead when medical teams could free her from the rubble, Hurriyet newspaper reported.

The group from Indian Army’s medical assistance team began treating the injured in a temporary field hospital after the main hospital in Iskenderun was destroyed.

He said that he had been pulled from the rubble of his collapsed apartment building by the authorities within an hour of the earthquake. But after receiving basic first aid, he was released without getting proper treatment for his injuries.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/11/1156313344/turkey-syria-earthquake-death-toll-survivors

The tragedy of the Antakya cemetery: “I buried, then I came here,” says Turkey’s minister of religious affairs Emir Canbulat

″I buried (everyone that I lost), then I came here,” Canbulat counted his dead relatives, which included his daughter who died, his sibling who died, his aunt who died, and the wife of the son who was 8 12 months pregnant.

A large graveyard was being constructed on the outskirts of Antakya. Backhoes and bulldozers dug pits in the field on the northeastern edge of the city as trucks and ambulances loaded with black body bags arrived continuously. Soldiers directing traffic on the busy adjacent road warned motorists not to take photographs.

A worker with Turkey’s Ministry of Religious Affairs who did not wish to be identified because of orders not to share information with the media said that around 800 bodies were brought the cemetery on Friday, its first day of operation. By the end of Saturday, as many as 2,000 had been buried, he said.

If the people who are coming out from the rubble survive, it’s a miracle. He said most of the people that come out are dead.

In the large region, temperatures remained below freezing and many people didn’t have a place to stay. The Turkish government has provided millions of meals and tents, but it is still not enough to reach many people in need.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/11/1156313344/turkey-syria-earthquake-death-toll-survivors

“It’s horrible”: a daughter’s nightmare in the aftermath of a terrible earthquake, says the head of the World Health Organization

President Bashar Assad and his wife have visited injured quake victims in a hospital in the coastal city of Latakia, a base of support for the Syrian leader.

According to the SANA report, the head of the World Health Organization arrived in Syria on Saturday with 35 tons of medical equipment. There will be another plane carrying 30 tons of medical equipment in the near future, he said.

“It was awful. I rushed there as soon as I heard the news. And with my own bare hands, with my own means, with great effort I tried to pull out my daughter. Hancer couldn’t save his daughter.

There was a large girder on my daughter and I didn’t have hope. Her waist up was free but below her waist under the rubble,” she was crushed, he said. “Unfortunately, during the earthquake, she died right there and then. She had no chance of survival.

An AFAD Observation of Turkey, and a Crisis Against Property Developers in Light of the Earthquake-Castrophe

I also spoke with AFAD. [the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency in Turkey], and they helped as much as they could. But they said they could not provide an excavator to that area,” Hancer said.

“My mother, my two older brothers, my sister-in-law and her little daughter. There were seven people including my daughter. Hancer said that they were all under the rubble.

Hancer’s home has also been badly damaged, he said, adding that he doesn’t have anywhere to stay. “We cannot enter our house because we don’t have the means. We are left outside.

Meanwhile, amid growing public anger over the government’s response to the disaster, Turkish authorities have carried out a wave of arrests of property developers accused of “negligence” over building collapses due to last week’s earthquake.