Turkey quake survivors seek hot meals as rescues wane
ADIYAMAN, Turkey (AP) — Thousands left homeless by a massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria a week ago packed into crowded tents or lined up in the streets Monday for hot meals as the desperate search for survivors entered its last hours.
Rescue teams that included Turkish coal miners and experts using sniffer dogs and thermal cameras searched pulverized apartment blocks for signs of life.
In southern Hatay province, rescuers cheered and clapped as a 13-year-old boy identified only by his first name, Kaan, was pulled from the rubble.
Stories of near-miraculous rescues have flooded the airwaves in recent days, including many that were broadcast live on Turkish television and beamed around the world. But tens of thousands of dead have been found during the same period. Experts say the window for such rescues has nearly closed, given the length of time that has passed, the fact that temperatures have fallen to minus 6 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) and the severity of the building collapses.
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake and its aftershocks struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6, reducing huge swaths of towns and cities to mountains of broken concrete and twisted metal. The death toll has surpassed 35,000.
In some areas, search teams placed signs that read “ses yok” or “no sound” in front of buildings they had inspected for signs of life, HaberTurk television reported.
The quake’s financial damage in Turkey alone was estimated at $84.1 billion, according to the Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation, a non-governmental business organization. Calculated using a statistical comparison with a similarly devastating 1999 quake, the figure was considerably higher than any official estimates so far.
Elsewhere, Turkey offered to open a second border crossing to assist the international aid effort to Syria, and the United Nations said “a lot of delicate discussions” were taking place to open more border-crossings from Turkey to Syria.
Some 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the epicenter, almost no houses were left standing in the village of Polat, where residents salvaged refrigerators, washing machines and other goods from wrecked homes.
Not enough tents have arrived for the homeless, forcing families to share the tents that are available, survivor Zehra Kurukafa said.
“We sleep in the mud, all together with two, three, even four families,” Kurukafa said.
Turkish authorities said Monday that more than 150,000 survivors have been moved to shelters outside the affected provinces. In the city of Adiyaman, Musa Bozkurt waited for a vehicle to bring him and others to western Turkey. Volunteers from across Turkey have mobilized to help millions of survivors, including a group of chefs and restaurant owners who served traditional food such as beans and rice and lentil soup to survivors who lined up in the streets of downtown
Adiyaman. Damage included heritage sites in places such as Antakya, on the southern coast of Turkey, an important ancient port and early center of Christianity historically known as Antioch. Greek Orthodox churches in the region have started charity drives to assist the relief effort and raise funds to rebuild or repair churches.
Many in Turkey blame faulty construction for the vast devastation, and authorities have begun targeting contractors allegedly linked with buildings that collapsed. Turkey has introduced construction codes that meet earthquake-engineering standards, but experts say the codes are rarely enforced.
As the scale of the disaster has come into view, sorrow and disbelief have turned to rage over the sense that the emergency response was ineffective. That anger could be a political problem for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces a tough reelection battle in May. Turkey’s death toll has exceeded 31,000, and the health minister said more than 19,000 survivors were being treated in hospitals. Deaths in Syria, split between rebel-held areas and government-held areas, have risen beyond 3,500, although those reported by the government haven’t been updated in days.