Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
More collapsed buildings in aftermath of new tremors
There were reports of more collapsed buildings Turkey in Syria after another 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey’s Hatay province, which was devastated by a massive tremor two week ago.
Syria’s state news agency, SANA, reported six people had been injured in Aleppo from falling debris, while the mayor of Hatay said a number of buildings collapsed, trapping people inside.
Turkey’s disaster management agency, AFAD, said the new quake was centered around the town of Defne, in Hatay province. It was followed by a second, magnitude 5.8 tremor.
NTV television said the quake caused some damaged buildings to collapse. The quake was felt in Syria, Jordan, Israel and Egypt.
The magnitude 7.8 earthquake which struck Feb. 6 has killed nearly 45,000 people in Turkey and Syria. Turkish authorities have recorded more than 6,000 aftershocks since.
Lutfu Savas, the mayor for Hatay said those trapped were believed to be people who had either returned to homes or were trying move furniture from damaged homes.
In the Turkish city of Adana, eyewitness Alejandro Malaver said people left homes for the streets, carrying blankets into their cars. Malaver said everyone was really scared and that “no one wants to get back into their houses.”
The Syrian opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense also known as White Helmets reported that several people were injured in Syria’s rebel-held northwest after they jumped from buildings or when they wee struck by falling debris in the town of Jinderis, one of the most affected town by the Feb. 6 earthquake.
The White Helmets added that several damaged and abandoned buildings collapsed in Syria’s northwest without injuring anyone.
The Syrian American Medical Society, which runs hospitals in northern Syria, said it had treated a number of patients — including a 7-year-old boy — who suffered heart attacks brought on by fear following the earthquake.
Urged to stay away
Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said inspections for damage were underway in Hatay and urged residents to stay away from damaged buildings and to carefully follow rescue teams’ directions.
AFAD urged people to stay away from the coastline as a precaution against “the risk of the sea level rising ...”
Some media outlets in Syria’s Idlib and Aleppo regions that were badly affected by the new, 6.4 magnitude earthquake reported that some buildings collapsed and that electricity and internet services were interrupted in parts of the region.
The media outlets said many people fled their homes and were gathering in open areas.
The Turkish disaster management agency, AFAD, has raised the number of confirmed fatalities from the first earthquake in Turkey to 41,156. That increases the overall death toll in both Turkey and Syria to 44,844.
Search and rescue operations for survivors have been called off in most of the quake zone, but AFAD chief Yunus Sezer told reporters that search teams were pressing ahead with their efforts in more than a dozen collapsed buildings, most of them in Hatay.
There were no signs of anyone being alive under the rubble since three members of one family — a mother, father and 12-yearold boy — were extracted from a collapsed building in Hatay on Saturday. The boy later died.
Disease risk
The European Union’s health agency has warned of the risk of disease outbreaks in the coming weeks.
The Centre for Disease Prevention and Controls said that “food and water-borne diseases, respiratory infections and vaccine-preventable infections are a risk in the upcoming period, with the potential to cause outbreaks, particularly as survivors are moving to temporary shelters.”
“A surge of cholera cases in the affected areas is a significant possibility in the coming weeks,” it said, noting that authorities in northwestern Syria have reported thousands of cases of the disease since last September and a planned vaccination campaign was delayed due to the quake.
The ECDC also warned of viral infections such as hepatitis A, parasites and bacterial infections that can all be spread by difficult hygiene conditions in emergency shelters and camps.
Syria’s minister of public works and housing, Suhail Abdul Latif, said the Syrian government will secure 350 housing units for people displaced by the earthquake and made a call for “friendly countries” to send more.
“We will secure the affected people within our capabilities, but after a while, it is not possible to continue placing families in shelters in order to preserve their health,” he said.
Housing has been a pressing need in all the earthquake-hit areas, with many families sleeping in makeshift tents or cramming into crowded schools and sports stadiums.
Erdogan’s take
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces elections in May or June, says his country will start building tens of thousands of new homes as early as next month.
Erdogan said the new buildings will be no taller than three or four stories, built on firmer ground and to higher standards and in consultation with “geophysics, geotechnical, geology and seismology professors” and other experts.
“We want to avoid disasters ... by shifting our settlements away from the lowlands to the (more solid) mountains as much as possible,” Erdogan said in a televised address during a visit to Hatay province.
The Turkish leader said destroyed cultural monuments would be rebuilt in accordance with their to “historic and cultural texture.”
Erdogan said around 1.6 million people are currently being housed in temporary shelters.
NATO said a ship carrying 600 temporary container homes had left Italy and is expected to arrive in Turkey next week.
The military alliance has pledged to send more than 1,000 containers that will serve as temporary shelters for at least 4,000 people left homeless by the first earthquake.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, who visited the quakedevastated region last week, called it the worst disaster in the alliance’s history.
Authorities say more than 110,000 buildings across 11 quake-hit Turkish provinces were either destroyed or so severely damaged that they need to be torn down.