Shortages of shelter, medical supplies pose dangers to earthquake survivors
A week after a devastating earthquake struck Turkey and Syria, with families crowded under tarps and cardboard shelters, a severe shortage of tents, housing and medical supplies is imperiling relief efforts, leaving survivors struggling amid ruins and in extreme cold.
The death toll for both countries surpassed 35,000 on Monday, and more than 1 million people were left homeless in Turkey alone, according to the Turkish government. One of the most urgent needs was shelter to help the thousands of people whose homes were either destroyed or may be unsafe.
In the towns and cities in the earthquake zone, people appeared to be crowded everywhere except inside the cracked and unstable buildings where they had once worked and lived. Large apartment towers stood dark and empty, while tents and makeshift shelters filled parks, sidewalks and the courtyards of mosques.
Conditions were dire enough that Bashar Assad, Syria's authoritarian president, decided to open two aid crossings from Turkey into northwest Syria, where both his government and opposition forces control territory, the United Nations announced Monday.
The lack of food, clothing, medicine and shelter was acute in the region. At a campsite across the street from a collapsed building in Kahramanmaras, a Turkish city near the epicenter, one family struggled to stay warm around a fire of whatever it could burn.
“I couldn't think about eating,” said Zeynep Omac, sitting on wooden benches with her two children, 9 and 14, near a plume of acrid smoke. “I just give the kids snacks I can find.”
The Turkish Red Crescen said it was speeding up the production of tents after the Turkish news media reported a shortage of temporary housing and poor sanitary conditions for the homeless.
As President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey came under criticism for his government's response to the disaster, Turkish officials Monday detained more property developers and others suspected of having a hand in construction that violated building codes, according to the state-run Anadolu News Agency. Experts have said that poor construction most likely worsened the toll.
Bekir Bozdag, Turkey's justice minister, said Sunday that legal proceedings against more than 130 people were underway over their apparent ties to collapsed buildings.