The earthquake that killed at least five people in Kahramanmaras: a warning to prepare for “extremely devastating” future events in Turkey
Turkey’s government says that search and rescue teams have pulled over 7,000 people from under collapsed buildings in the past two days. But worries grew that survivors may succumb to their injuries or hypothermia, due to worsening weather conditions in the region.
The magnitude 7.8 quake that occurred in southern Turkey, which killed at least 5 people, is the world’s most damaging earthquake in more than a decade. A 2011 earthquake in Japan triggered a tsunami that killed more than 19,000 people.
On Wednesday, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Kahramanmaras, a city near the epicenter, and told survivors “we are face to face with a great disaster.” There is growing public anger that the rescue response has been slow, and Erdogan acknowledged there were shortfalls by his government in the immediate aftermath of the quake. The president said destroyed infrastructure and winter weather are complicating factors.
Hamideh stood outside the residential building where she used to live with her family waiting to hear if her son survived.
Turkey is moving west with earthquakes: What next? A study of Turkish buildings affected by Izmit’s 2001 quake and the East Anatolian fault
Aid groups consider the first 72 hours after a natural disaster as crucial for rescuing survivors. The US says that sanctions don’t include humanitarian assistance, and that the Syrian government has blamed them for the difficulties in relief efforts. Regardless, northern Syria lacks the heavy equipment and other infrastructure to come to the aid of the hundreds of thousands displaced by this disaster, and the only U.N.-authorized road from Turkey to that region has been damaged by the quake.
Iran, Libya, and the United Arab Emirates have sent hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid to Syria, and dozens of countries have sent aid to Turkey, including more than 5,000 rescue workers who are arriving in the disaster area.
Turkey’s Emergency Management Agency, or AFAD, has built more than70,000 tents to house the 380,000 people who were temporarily displaced by the disaster.
The earthquake and its aftershocks have flattened buildings and sent rescuers digging through concrete debris to find survivors, with the death toll expected to increase further. Nature talked to four people about what the next few days have in store for them.
Most of Turkey sits on the Anatolian plate between two major faults: the North Anatolian Fault and the East Anatolian Fault. The tectonic plate that carries Arabia, including Syria, is moving northwards and colliding with the southern rim of Eurasia, which is squeezing Turkey out towards the west, says David Rothery, a geoscientist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK. “Turkey is moving west about 2 centimetres per year along the East Anatolian Fault,” he adds. “Half the length of this fault is lit up now with earthquakes.”
In 1999, a magnitude-7.4 earthquake hit 11 kilometres southeast of Izmit, Turkey, killing more than 17,000 people and leaving more than 250,000 homeless. After this tragedy, the Turkish government introduced new building codes and a compulsory earthquake insurance system. However, many of the buildings affected by this week’s quake were built before 2000, says Mustafa Erdik, a civil engineer at Boğaziçi University, Turkey.
In a study1 published last March in Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, Arzu Arslan Kelam at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, and her colleagues suggested that the centre of the city of Gaziantep would experience medium-to-severe damage from a magnitude-6.5 earthquake. Most buildings are low-rise brick structures that are close to each other.
More than 11 years of conflict has made building standards impossible to enforce in Syria. The earthquake struck Syria’s northwestern regions, with buildings collapsing in Aleppo and Idlib. Some buildings in Syria have been made out of low-quality materials, according to Rothery. “They might have fallen down more readily than things that were built at somewhat greater expense. He said they had yet to find out.
“The weather forecast for the region for tonight is dropping below freezing. The people who are trapped in the rubble and could be rescued, could die from the cold. These hazards continue, he says.
The girl with the pink blanket, who was wrapped up in a sheet, was found dead in the ruins of the building. She was one of the victims of the big earthquake on Monday.
Elsewhere, excavators dug out the body of man believed to be a Syrian refugee in his 40s, who seemed to be on a mattress, like many of those who died after the quake struck around 4 a.m.
In a neighboring building, also collapsed, rescuers were digging down from the top to try to reach one or possibly two people thought to be alive. The pneumatic hand-operated drill was being held by a generator and the man was clearing rubble with his bare hands.
He appeared to have spotted signs of life beneath the wreckage, but rescuers sent away a waiting ambulance, saying there was still a lot of work to do.
A man volunteering at one of the hospitals in Kahramanmaras told CNN Wednesday there were 350 bodies in the morgue that had not been collected by relatives because their family members had died.
Turkey’s response to the Kahramanmaras earthquake and its response to crisis management: a televised briefing by Prime Minister Erdogan
Flanked by officials, he visited an emergency relief area set up by the country’s disaster management agency, AFAD. There are rows of white tents in the sports stadium, destined to house some of the families who have lost their homes.
In a televised briefing from the relief center, Erdogan said the government’s target was to rebuild the Kahramanmaras region “in one year” and that people would get help with emergency housing.
The government has done what they are capable of doing, according to Somezley. This is not a time to talk about politics — it’s a time to help people who need it.”
He acknowledged the government’s initial response “had some problems” in terms of natural gas supply and roads, but said the situation was “under control.” The government is planning to give 10,000 Turkish liras (around $531 USD) to help families impacted, he added.
Very few buildings in the city of Kahramanmaras have been left unscathed by the quakes, although those in mostly newer neighborhoods higher up the valley have suffered less obvious damage.
At the bottom of the city, there were many crying and sad people because of the tumbling buildings where they lived before disaster struck.
A handful clutched photographs of loved ones who are under the rubble, less in hope of their rescue than as an act of remembrance – holding out snaps of their children or wedding pictures and saying “they are gone.”
A three-month state of emergency has been declared in 10 Turkish provinces, and aid agencies have warned of “catastrophic” repercussions in northwest Syria, where millions of vulnerable and displaced people were already relying on humanitarian support.
ISTANBUL — Rescuers continue to search for bodies from underneath thousands of toppled buildings in southern Turkey, and more than 380,000 people in the region have been left homeless.
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Istanbul’s stock exchange closed until Feb. 15 after initial trading showed rapid declines, triggering a circuit breaker when declines reached 7%. The Turkish economy was already reeling from out-of-control inflation.
Critics like Ozel point out that national funds meant for natural disasters such as this one were spent on construction projects by the associates of Erdogan and his coalition government.
After a catastrophic earthquake in northwestern Turkey killed more than 18,000 people in 1999, authorities imposed an earthquake tax meant to corral billions of dollars’ worth of disaster prevention and relief.
Ozel says it’s not just a “near-total incompetence on preparedness on the part of the government” in responding to this week’s earthquake. “To make matters worse, if that were even possible,” he says, “the government is also making it almost impossible for other organizations, civil society, citizens themselves and mayors and municipalities to actually help.”
Erdogan’s centralization of Turkey’s government has meant a plethora of restrictions on how individual cities and aid organizations can operate in the country, hampering overall rescue efforts. Turkey has embassies along with an array of nongovernmental organizations and cultural associations.
Ozel believes that Turkey’s inflation is a factor that has weakened Erdogan in the upcoming election. “I would expect the government to actually be one of the victims under the rubble of this earthquake,” Ozel predicts.
An 18-year-old high school student, Emrihan Korkmaz, has been working on the aid effort for three days. Schools throughout Turkey have been ordered closed to mourn victims of the earthquake and so that people like Korkmaz can help out.
“We’ve managed to load 18 semitrucks and send them to the earthquake zone. “They’re filled with blankets, clothes, but there is an urgent need for food,” he said as he stacked a box under the banner with the image of Erdogan hanging from the ceiling. “However we can get it to them, it doesn’t matter. There are people there who need food.