Quake death toll climbs past 3,400
Thousands injured amid cries for help from Syria, Turkey
ADANA, Turkey — Rescuers in Turkey and war-ravaged Syria searched through the frigid night into Tuesday, hoping to pull more survivors from the rubble after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 3,400 people and toppled thousands of buildings across a wide region.
Authorities feared the death toll from Monday’s pre-dawn earthquake and aftershocks would keep climbing as rescuers looked for survivors among tangles of metal and concrete spread across the region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war and refugee crisis.
Residents jolted out of sleep by the quake rushed outside in the rain and snow to escape falling debris, while those who were trapped cried for help. Throughout the day, aftershocks rattled the region, including a jolt nearly as strong as the initial quake. After night fell, workers were still sawing away slabs and pulling out bodies as families waited for news on trapped loved ones.
Tens of thousands were left homeless in Turkey and Syria.
In Turkey’s Gaziantep, a provincial capital 20 miles from the epicenter, people took refuge in shopping malls, stadiums and community centers. Mosques around the region were opened to provide shelter.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared seven days of national mourning.
U.S. President Joe Biden called Erdogan to express condolences and offer assistance to the NATO ally. The White House said it was sending search-and-rescue teams to support Turkey’s efforts.
The quake, which was centered on Turkey’s southeastern province of Kahramanmaras, sent residents of Damascus, Syria, and Beirut rushing into the street and was felt as far away as Cairo, the Egyptian capital.
The quake piled more misery on a region that has seen tremendous suffering over the past decade.
On the Syrian side, the area is divided between government-held territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave, which is surrounded by Russianbacked government forces. Turkey, meanwhile, is home to millions of refugees from the civil war.
More than 7,800 people were rescued across 10 provinces, said Orhan Tatar, an official with Turkey’s disaster management authority.
The region sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in similarly powerful earthquakes that hit northwest Turkey in 1999.
The U.S. Geological
Survey measured Monday’s quake at 7.8. Hours later, a 7.5 magnitude temblor struck more than 60 miles away.
The second jolt caused an apartment building to topple face-forward onto the street in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa.
The structure disintegrated into rubble and raised a cloud of dust as bystanders screamed, according to video of the scene.
Thousands of buildings were reported collapsed in a wide area extending from Syria’s cities of Aleppo and Hama to Turkey’s Diyarbakir, more than 200 miles to the northeast.
In Turkey, more than 5,600 buildings were destroyed, authorities said.
Bitterly cold temperatures could reduce the time frame that rescuers have to save trapped survivors, said Dr. Steven Godby, an expert in natural hazards at Nottingham Trent University in England.
The difficulty of working in areas beset by civil war would further complicate rescue efforts, he said.
Offers of help poured in from dozens of countries, as well as the European Union and NATO. The vast majority were for Turkey, with Russian and even an Israeli promise of help to the Syrian government, but it was not clear if any would go to the devastated rebel-held pocket in the northwest.
The opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense described the situation in the enclave as “disastrous.”
The opposition-held area, centered on the province of Idlib, has been under siege for years, with frequent Russian and government airstrikes. The territory depends on a flow of aid from nearby Turkey for everything from food to medical supplies.
In the small Syrian rebelheld town of Azmarin in the mountains by the Turkish border, the bodies of several dead children, wrapped in blankets, were brought to a hospital.
In Turkey, television stations aired screens split into four or five, showing live coverage from rescue efforts in the worst-hit provinces.
In Adana, 20 or so people used power saws atop the cement mountain of a collapsed building to saw out space for any survivors to climb out.
“I don’t have the strength anymore,” one survivor could be heard calling out from beneath the rubble of another building in Adana earlier in the day, as rescue workers tried to reach him, said a resident, journalism student Muhammet Fatih Yavuz.
Huseyin Yayman, a legislator from Turkey’s Hatay province, said several of his family members were stuck under the rubble of their collapsed homes.
“There are so many other people who are also trapped,” he told HaberTurk television by phone. “There are so many buildings that have been damaged. People are on the streets. It’s raining, it’s winter.”