Crews race to find quake survivors
Aid and rescue teams head to Turkey and Syria
NURDAGI, Turkey – Search teams and aid poured into Turkey and Syria on Tuesday as rescuers working in freezing temperatures and sometimes using their bare hands dug through the remains of buildings flattened by a powerful earthquake. The death toll soared above 6,200 and was still expected to rise.
But with the damage spread over a wide area, the massive relief operation often struggled to reach devastated towns, and voices that had been crying out from the rubble fell silent.
“We could hear their voices; they were calling for help,” said Ali Silo, whose two relatives could not be saved in the Turkish town of Nurdagi.
In the end, it was left to Silo, a Syrian who arrived a decade ago, and other residents to recover the bodies and those of two other victims.
Monday’s magnitude 7.8 quake and a cascade of strong aftershocks cut a swath of destruction that stretched hundreds of miles across southeastern Turkey and neighboring Syria. The shaking toppled thousands of buildings and heaped more misery on a region shaped by Syria’s 12-year civil war and refugee crisis. One temblor that followed the first registered at magnitude 7.5, powerful in its own right.
Unstable piles of metal and concrete made the search efforts perilous, while freezing temperatures made them ever more urgent, as worries grew about how long trapped survivors could last in the cold. Snow swirled around rescuers in Turkey’s Malatya province, according to footage circulated by the state-run Anadolu news agency.
The scale of the suffering – and the accompanying rescue effort – were staggering.
More than 8,000 people have been pulled from the debris in Turkey alone, and some 380,000 have taken refuge in government shelters or hotels, said
Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay.
Many took to social media to plead for assistance for loved ones believed to be trapped under the rubble. Anadolu quoted Interior Ministry officials as saying all calls were being “collected meticulously” and the information relayed to search teams.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said 13 million of the country’s 85 million people were affected, and he declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces.
For the entire quake-hit area, that number could be as high as 23 million people, according to Adelheid Marschang, a senior emergencies officer with the World Health Organization.
Turkey is home to millions of refugees from the Syrian civil war. The affected area in Syria is divided between government-controlled territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave.
The Palestinian Authority said that 57 Palestinian refugees were among the dead – 14 in Turkey and 43 in Syria, a country that for decades has hosted nearly a half-million Palestinians in large refugee camps.
Teams from nearly 30 countries headed for Turkey or Syria.
As promises of help flooded in, including a pledge of $100 million from the United Arab Emirates, Turkey sought to accelerate the effort by allowing only vehicles carrying aid to enter the worst-hit provinces of Kahramanmaras, Adiyaman and Hatay.
The United Nations said it was “exploring all avenues” to get supplies to rebel-held northwestern Syria, and released $25 million from its emergency fund to help kick-start the humanitarian response in Turkey and Syria.
Sebastien Gay, the head of mission in Syria for Doctors Without Borders, said health facilities were overwhelmed and medical personnel were working around the clock to help the wounded.
Nurgul Atay told The Associated Press she could hear her mother’s voice beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in the Turkish city of Antakya, the capital of Hatay province. But efforts to get into the ruins had been futile without any heavy equipment to help.
“My mother is 70 years old; she won’t be able to withstand this for long,” she said.
But help did reach some. Several dramatic rescues were reported across the region as survivors, including children, were pulled from the rubble more than 30 hours after the earthquake.
Residents in a Syrian town discovered a crying infant whose mother apparently gave birth to her while buried in the rubble of a five-story apartment building, relatives and a doctor said.
The newborn was found buried under the debris with her umbilical cord still connected to her mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya, who was found dead, they said.
The baby was the only member of her family to survive from the building collapse in the small town of Jinderis, next to the Turkish border, Ramadan Sleiman, a relative, told The Associated Press.
In the city of Aleppo, a Maronite Christian convent opened its doors to hundreds of residents who fled their shaking homes.
“Based on our principles and ideas of receiving the most needy, we wanted to make sure that everybody who was scared or lost their house or was on the streets could find shelter here,” said Brother George Sabah. “We opened every part of the convent.”
Turkey has large numbers of troops in the border region and has tasked the military with aiding in the rescue efforts, including setting up tents for the homeless and a field hospital in Hatay province.
A navy ship docked on Tuesday at the province’s port of Iskenderun, where a hospital collapsed, to transport survivors in need of medical care to a nearby city.
A large fire at the port, caused by containers that toppled over during the earthquake, sent thick plumes of black smoke into the sky. The Defense Ministry later said the blaze was extinguished with the help of military aircraft.
Turkey’s emergency management agency said the number of deaths in the country had passed 4,500, with some 26,000 people injured.
The death toll in government-held areas of Syria climbed over 800, with some 1,400 injured, according to the Health Ministry. At least 900 people have died in the rebel-held northwest, according to the White Helmets, the emergency organization leading rescue operations, with more than 2,300 injured.
But Andrea Turner said much of her son’s charm seemed to slip away after he said that he had been abused by his doctor. He suffered from recurring nightmares and panic attacks, she said, and was struggling to move on.
She had thought about knocking on Lamont’s door that morning but wondered if maybe she had been overthinking it.
“I wanted to go in, but I didn’t. So I went downstairs, paused and went back upstairs,” she said, fighting back tears. “I was feeling something, but I didn’t know what it was.”
Andrea Turner went out to her car and sat for a minute. She had thought about calling her son from the road but instead sent him a text before she pulled away for work.
Upon returning home, she said, she realized she should have trusted her gut that morning.
She saw a series of notes on the coffee table in the family room and immediately ran upstairs to Lamont’s room. He wasn’t there.
She hurried back to the first floor, where she read the notes written by Lamont. The messages told Andrea Turner that her son was in the basement.
There she found Lamont’s lifeless body. Her son had taken his own life, she said, after years of fighting off thoughts of suicide brought on by his doctor’s sexual abuse.
Later, Andrea Turner read the note Lamont had left her — it said he knew she cared.
“One of the things he said was, ‘I heard you at my door. I wanted to open it, but I didn’t,’” she said of Lamont’s note. “’I saw you sitting in the car. I wanted to call you, but I didn’t.’”
ACCUSATIONS OF ABUSE
Lamont died July 31, 2019, almost two years after he had told his parents that he had been sexually abused by his family physician, Dr. Mark White.
White declined to be interviewed for this story through his attorney and insisted that all sexual interactions with Lamont were consensual. He has not been charged with a crime.
Lamont began seeing White as a primary care physician in 2012. White had been a doctor for Lamont’s cousin and his father, James Turner.
Before he took his own life, Lamont wrote a detailed description of his encounters with White. Lamont wrote that when he met White, he looked up to the doctor as a mentor of sorts.
White would on occasion buy him lunch or dinner. Lamont, who identified as gay, would talk to the doctor about politics, issues affecting the gay community, his career and life in general, he wrote.
Lamont later came to see White’s willingness to do such things as a way of grooming him for future sexual encounters.
The first time it happened was January 2013, Lamont wrote.
Lamont was 18 when the abuse began, he wrote. White was in his 50s, according to records.
White took Lamont to his Clintonville home to hang out. There, White offered him a massage to get rid of some tension in his back, Lamont wrote in his notes and other writings.
The doctor told Lamont to take his shirt and pants off and lay face down on a bed. Lamont wrote that he did as instructed.
White stripped down to his underwear, climbed on top of Lamont and began to massage him, according to his writings.
Right away, it hit Lamont that something was off. Lamont wrote that he felt nearly frozen on the bed.
Lamont said he noticed a change in the doctor’s demeanor.
White began whispering in Lamont’s ear, asking him how he felt, Lamont wrote. He tried to kiss Lamont, who turned away to avoid his lips.
The doctor then removed his underwear and Lamont’s and began grinding his penis against his 18-year-old patient, Lamont wrote.
He proceeded to perform oral sex on Lamont and masturbated him until he ejaculated. Lamont said that White then ejaculated on him.
Lamont wrote that he told the doctor he didn’t feel good and left the bed. White followed him to the couch and asked if Lamont wanted to sleep in his bed with him.
Lamont declined, and wrote that he instead laid on the couch wide awake the entire night until White drove him back to his Ohio State University dorm the next day.
Something similar would happen four more times, Lamont wrote. White’s attorney Larry James disagreed and said there were just two sexual encounters while Lamont was the doctor’s patient.
While Lamont claimed that White abused him after he became a patient, Larry James said the two began a “consensual intimate relationship” beforehand. That “relationship” continued while Lamont was under the doctor’s care, the attorney said.
White’s attorney also disputed Lamont’s written statements that the encounters with White made him suicidal. Instead, he said Lamont had been struggling with his sexuality and suicidal thoughts long before seeing the doctor.
Regardless, sexual encounters between doctors and patients have been ethically prohibited for centuries.
When it comes to the uneven power dynamic between physicians and their patients, consent isn’t possible, said Wendy Murphy, adjunct professor of sexual violence law at New England