More survivors rescued
ISTANBUL: Rescuers pulled more survivors from rubble yesterday, six days after one of the worst earthquakes to hit Türkiye and Syria, as Turkish authorities strove to preserve the disaster area and prevent looting.
With chances of finding more survivors growing more remote, the toll in both countries from Monday’s earthquake and major aftershocks rose above 28 000 and looked set to keep growing.
Displaced residents in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, near the epicentre, set up tents as close as they could to their damaged or destroyed homes in an effort to prevent them from being looted.
Facing questions over his response to the earthquake as he prepares for a national election that is expected to be the toughest of his two decades in power, President Tayyip Erdogan promised to start rebuiling within weeks.
In Syria, the disaster hit hardest in the rebel-held north-west, leaving many homeless for a second time after they were displaced by a decadeold civil war, though the region has received little aid compared to government-held areas.
In Turkey’s south-eastern province of Hatay, a Romanian rescue team carried a 35-year-old man named Mustafa down a pile of debris from a building, broadcaster CNN Turk said, about 149 hours after the quake.
“His health is good, he was talking,” said one rescuer. “He was saying: ‘Get me out of here quickly, I’ve got claustrophobia.’”
Two German rescue organisations suspended work in Türkiye on Saturday, citing reports of clashes between groups of people and highlighting concerns for security in the quake-hit areas.
One rescue worker, Gizem, said she had seen looters in the city of Antakya. “We cannot intervene much, as most of the looters carry knives.”
The soundness of buildings has come into sharp focus in the aftermath of the quake.
Vice-President Fuat Oktay said overnight that 131 suspects had so far been identified as responsible for the collapse of some of the thousands of buildings flattened in the 10 affected provinces.
“We will follow this up meticulously until the necessary judicial process is concluded, especially for buildings that suffered heavy damage and buildings that caused deaths and injuries,” he said.
The earthquake hit as Erdogan faces presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for June. Even before the disaster, his popularity was falling due to soaring inflation and a slumping Turkish currency.
Some people affected by the quake, and opposition politicians have accused the government of slow and inadequate relief efforts early on, and critics have questioned why the army, which played a key role after a 1999 earthquake, was not brought in sooner.
Erdogan has acknowledged problems, such as the challenge of delivering aid despite damaged transport links, but said the situation had been brought under control. He has called for solidarity and condemned “negative” politicking.
Along the main road leading into Antakya, where the few buildings left standing had large cracks or caved-in façades, traffic occasionally halted as rescue teams called for silence to detect signs of remaining life under the ruins.
UN aid chief Martin Griffiths described the earthquake as the region’s worst event in 100 years, predicting on Saturday that the death toll would at least double.
He praised Türkiye’s response, saying his experience was that disaster victims were always disappointed by early relief efforts.
The quake ranks as the world’s seventh deadliest natural disaster this century, its toll approaching the 31 000 from a quake in neighbouring Iran in 2003.
It has killed 24 617 inside Türkiye, and more than 3 500 in Syria, where tolls have not been updated since Friday.
Türkiye said about 80 000 people were in hospital, with more than 1 million in temporary shelters.
In Syria’s government-controlled city of Aleppo, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the disaster as heartbreaking as he supervised some relief distribution and promised more.
Western nations have largely shunned President Bashar al-Assad during the war that began in 2011. Almost 8 000 buildings in 10 Turkish provinces affected by the devastating earthquakes needed to be urgently demolished, the Turkish Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change Ministry said yesterday.
About 6 000 employees of the ministry are currently assessing the condition of buildings in the earthquake-hit provinces, according to a statement seen by Sputnik.
“So far, we have checked 132 898 buildings in 10 provinces ... Of them, 7 584 collapsed or need to be urgently demolished and 12 617 buildings are in an uninhabitable condition due to damage,” the statement read.
More than 31 000 buildings received minor damage as a result of the quakes, while more than 60 000 were not affected at all, the ministry added. According to the ministry’s estimates, the inspection of all buildings in 10 provinces will be completed within 3-4 days.
On Wednesday, Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said no one would get away with the negligence that resulted in the collapse of buildings during the quake.
After the catastrophic earthquakes of 1999, which killed more than 18 000 people, Türkiye revised the rules governing the construction of residential buildings. In particular, in 2007, a code for the construction of houses was adopted, taking into account the requirements necessary for earthquake protection.