Efforts in Turkey quake turn from search to aid
ADIYAMAN, Turkey — The desperate search for earthquake survivors in Turkey and Syria entered its final hours Monday as rescuers using sniffer dogs and thermal cameras surveyed pulverized apartment blocks for any sign of life a week after the disaster.
Teams in southern Turkey’s Hatay province cheered and clapped when a 13-year-old boy identified only by his first name, Kaan, was pulled from the rubble. In Gaziantep province, rescue workers, including coal miners who secured tunnels with wooden supports, found a woman alive in the wreckage of a five-story building.
Stories of such rescues have flooded the airwaves in recent days. But tens of thousands of dead have been found during the same period, and experts say the window for rescues has nearly closed, given the length of time that has passed, that temperatures have fallen to minus 21 degrees and the severity of the building collapses.
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake and its aftershocks struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6, reducing huge swaths of towns and cities to mountains of broken concrete and twisted metal. The death toll has surpassed 35,000.
In some areas, searchers placed signs that read “ses yok,” or “no sound,” in front of buildings they had inspected for any sign that someone was alive inside, HaberTurk television reported.
Associated Press journalists in Adiyaman saw a sign painted on a concrete slab in front of wreckage indicating an expert had inspected it. In Antakya, people left signs displaying their phone numbers and asking crews to contact them if they found any bodies in the rubble.
The quake’s financial damage in Turkey alone was estimated at $84.1 billion, according to the Turkish Enterprise and Business Confederation, a non-governmental business organization. Calculated using a statistical comparison with a similarly devastating 1999 quake, the figure was considerably higher than any official estimates so far.
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.
In other developments, Syria’s president agreed to open two new crossing points from Turkey to the country’s rebel-held northwest to deliver desperately needed aid and equipment for millions of earthquake victims, the United Nations announced.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the decision by Syrian leader Bashar Assad to open crossing points at Bab Al-Salam and Al Raée for an initial period of three months. Currently, the U.N. has only been allowed to deliver aid to the northwest Idlib area through a single crossing in the region of Bab Al-Hawa.