“The earthquake of the century”: The Narli family in ANTAKYA, Turkey, as the “density of the millenium”
ANTAKYA, Turkey— Rescue crews on Saturday pulled more survivors, including entire families, from toppled buildings despite diminishing hopes as the death toll of the enormous quake that struck a border region of Turkey and Syria five days ago surpassed 25,000.
Dramatic rescues were being broadcasted on Turkish television after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Monday, saving the Narli family in central Kahramanmaras. First, 12-year-old Nehir Naz Narli was saved, then both of her parents.
That followed the rescue earlier in the day of a family of five from a mound of debris in the hard-hit town of Nurdagi, in Gaziantep province, TV network HaberTurk reported. Rescuers cheered and chanted, “God is Great!” as the last family member, the father, was lifted to safety.
The total death toll in the northwestern rebel held region of Syria has reached 2,166, with many of them women and children. The total dead in Syria was 3,553, while in Turkey, officials counted 21,043 dead through Saturday.
Erdogan acknowledged earlier in the week that the initial response has been hampered by the extensive damage. He said that the most affected area was 500 kilometers in diameter and home to 13 million people. During a tour of quake-damaged cities Saturday, Erdogan said a disaster of this scope was rare, and again referred to it as the “disaster of the century.”
“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 132th Hour of Maria’s Rescue: She’d Beaming Intubated, but Not for a Day After the First Earthquake
A woman in her twenties was rescued from the rubble at the same location in the same hour, and she was extricated in the 132th 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 “God is great!”
A 3-year-old girl and her father were pulled from debris in the town of Islahiye, Gaziantep province, about an hour before the 7-year-old girl 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 went to the scene of the collapsed building early Saturday and intubated the 13-year-old girl. But she died before the medical teams could amputate a limb and free her from the rubble, Hurriyet newspaper reported.
Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the odds of finding survivors quickly became less and less. The rescuers were moving to identify survivors with thermal cameras in order to give them a chance to survive.
A group from the indian army’s medical assistance team started treating injured people in a temporary field hospital in the southern state of Iskenderun, after the main hospital was destroyed.
The efforts of a team of Italian and Turkish rescuers also paid off when they removed a 35-year-old man from the wreckage in the hard-hit city of Antakya. 149 hours after the first earthquake, a man appeared to be unscathed as he was taken on a stretcher to an ambulance.
An Antakya cemetery for the first earthquake-related humanitarian aid convoy left by the United Nations and the head of the World Health Organization
″I buried (everyone that I lost), then I came here,” Canbulat said, counting his dead relatives: “My daughter is dead, my sibling died, my aunt and her daughter died, and the wife of her son” who was 8 ½ months pregnant.
A large makeshift graveyard was under construction on the outskirts of Antakya on Saturday. 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 midday on Saturday, he said, as many as 2,000 had been buried.
If people survive, it’s a miracle. He said that most of the people that come out are dead.
Temperatures remained below freezing across the large region, and many people have no shelter. The Turkish government has distributed millions of hot meals, as well as tents and blankets, but is still struggling to reach many people in need.
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 into northwestern Syria on Friday, the day after an aid shipment planned before the disaster arrived.
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.
The head of the World Health Organization arrived in Syria with 35 tons of medical equipment on Saturday, according to SANA. He said another plane carrying an additional 30 tons of medical equipment will arrive in the coming days.
An Istanbul earthquake-related contractor had been arrested and charged with building a collapse on the side of a building in the Hatay province
ANTAKYA, Turkey — Rescuers were able to pull a few survivors from the rubble six days after a pair of earthquakes devastated southeast Turkey and northern Syria.
The death toll from Monday’s quakes stood at 28,191 — with another 80,000-plus injured — as of Sunday morning and was certain to rise as bodies kept emerging.
As despair also bred rage at the agonizingly slow rescue efforts, the focus turned to who was to blame for not better preparing people in the earthquake-prone region that includes an area of Syria that was already suffering from years of civil war.
Even though Turkey has, on paper, construction codes that meet current earthquake-engineering standards, they are too rarely enforced, explaining why thousands of buildings slumped onto their side or pancaked downward onto residents.
Turkey’s Justice Ministry has announced that it will establish “Earthquake Crimes Investigation” bureaus. The bureaus would aim to identify contractors and others responsible for building works, gather evidence, instruct experts including architects, geologists and engineers, and check building permits and occupation permits.
Authorities arrested two people in the province of Gaziantep on Sunday who are suspected of having cut down columns to make extra room in a building that collapsed, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.
A building contractor was detained by authorities on Friday at Istanbul airport before he could board a flight out of the country. He was the builder of a 12-story building which collapsed in the historic city of Antakya in Hatay province, killing an untold number of people.
The detentions could help direct public anger toward builders and contractors, deflecting attention away from local and state officials who allowed the apparently sub-standard constructions to go ahead. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, already burdened by an economic downturn and high inflation, faces parliamentary and presidential elections in May.
Many survivors who lost loved ones have turned their anger at authorities. It’s harder to race against the clock because rescue crews have been overwhelmed by the widespread damage that has impacted roads and airports.
A video of a young girl wearing a navy blue jumper was posted by Turkey’s health minister. At the 150th hour there was good news. Rescued a little while ago by crews. There is always hope! He sent out a message.
A child was freed in NiZIP, in Gaziantep, and a woman was saved from the ruins of an eight-story building in Antakya. The woman, a teacher named Meltem, asked for tea as soon as she emerged, according to NTV.
In Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter of the first 7.8 quake that struck early Monday morning, efforts were underway to reach a survivor detected by sniffer dogs beneath a now-pancaked seven-story building, NTV reported.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/12/1156387820/turkey-has-issued-over-100-building-arrest-warrants-after-the-deadly-earthquake
The death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region reached 3,553 in 24 hours, according to the White Helmets
The death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue worker group the White Helmets. The overall death toll in Syria stood at 3,553 on Saturday, though the 1,387 deaths reported for government-held parts of the country hadn’t been updated in days.