Turkey quake survivors face despair as hope wanes
NGO estimates financial damage at $84 billion
ADIYAMAN, Turkey – 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 for hot meals Monday, while the desperate search for anyone still alive likely entered its last hours.
In nearby southern Hatay province, rescuers cheered and clapped as a 13year-old boy, identified only by his first name, Kaan, was rescued from the rubble 182 hours after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck. Thousands of local and overseas teams, including Turkish coal miners and experts aided by sniffer dogs and thermal cameras, are scouring pulverized apartment blocks for signs of life.
While stories of near-miraculous rescues have flooded the airwaves in recent days – many broadcast live on Turkish television and beamed around the world – tens of thousands of dead have been found during the same period. Experts say given temperatures that have fallen to 21 degrees Fahrenheit – and the total collapse of so many buildings – the window for such rescues is nearly shut.
The quake and its aftershocks, including a major one nine hours after the initial temblor, struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6, killing more than 35,000 and reducing whole swaths of towns and cities inhabited by millions to fragments of concrete and twisted metal.
The Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation, a non-governmental business organization, estimated the financial damage from the quake in Turkey alone at $84.1 billion. The amount was considerably higher than any official estimates so far, and was calculated using a statistical comparison with the similarly devastating 1999 quake that hit northwest Turkey. Senior United Nations officials conceded that help to quake victims in Syria had been too slow, and on Monday Turkey offered to open a second border crossing to assist the international effort.
About 60 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, said survivor Zehra Kurukafa, forcing families to share the tents that are available.
“We sleep in the mud, all together with two, three, even four families,” said Kurukafa.
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, 25, waited for a vehicle to bring him and others to western Turkey.
“We’re going away, but we have no idea what will happen when we get there,” Bozkurt said. “We have no goal. Even if there was (a plan) what good will it be after this hour? I no longer have my father or my uncle. What do I have left?”
But Fuat Ekinci, a 55-year-old farmer, was reluctant to leave his home for western Turkey despite the destruction, saying he didn’t have the means to live elsewhere and had fields that need to be tended.
“Those who have the means are leaving, but we’re poor,” he said. “The government says, go and live there a month or two. How do I leave my home? My fields are here, this is my home, how do I leave it behind?”
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 like 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.
As the scale of the disaster comes into view, sorrow and disbelief have turned to rage over the sense there has been an ineffective response to the historic disaster. That anger could be a political problem for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces a tough reelection battle in May.
Meanwhile, rescue workers, including coal miners who secured salvage tunnels with wooden supports, found a woman alive Monday in the wreckage of a five-story building in Turkey’s Gaziantep province.
Syrian authorities said a newborn whose mother gave birth while trapped under the rubble of their home was doing well. The baby, Aya, was found hours after the quake, still connected by the umbilical cord to her mother, who was dead. She is being breastfed by the wife of the director of the hospital where she is being treated.