Detection of Earthquake-Like Behavior in Turkey’s Oldest Buildings: Turkish Prime Minister and a Seismologist
Turkey’s government said search and rescue teams have pulled more than 8,000 people from underneath the rubble of thousands of toppled 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 death toll from the early Monday morning quake has reached 11,000, The Associated Press reported. By midday Wednesday, Turkey’s government reported 8,500 deaths in the country from the quake. In Syria, the death toll has reached more than 1,000 in both government-held and rebel-controlled areas.
People in Turkey are aware of their susceptibility to earthquakes, according to a seismologist based in Istanbul. Puskulcu was on a tour last week of western Turkey and visited the cities of Adana, Tarsus and Mersin to deliver workshops on earthquake awareness.
Hamideh stands outside of the building where she lived with her family waiting to hear if her son survived.
Erdospheric effects on buildings and buildings in Turkey following the Gaziantep earthquake for 12 years after the first UN-SYM disaster
The conflict has isolated many areas of Syria and complicated efforts to get aid in. The United Nations said the first earthquake-related aid convoy crossed from Turkey into northwestern Syria on Friday, the day after an aid shipment planned before the disaster arrived.
The disaster compounded suffering in a region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war, which has displaced millions of people within the country and left them dependent on aid. The fighting sent millions more to seek refuge in Turkey.
Turkey’s emergency management agency, AFAD, reports it has set up more than 70,000 tents for emergency shelter to the more than 380,000 people who have been temporarily displaced by this disaster.
Rescuers dig through concrete debris to find survivors after a devastating earthquake and its follow ups flattened buildings and killed many people. Nature spoke to four researchers about the seismic activity in the region and what the next few days will bring.
Most of Turkey sits on the Anatolian plate between two major faults: the North Anatolian Fault and the East Anatolian Fault. The plate carrying Arabia and Syria is moving northwards in order to squeeze Turkey out of the southern rim of Europe, according to a scientist at the Open University. “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.”
The primary earthquake was centered 26 kilometres east of the city of Nurdai in Turkey’s Gaziantep province. The magnitude-7.5 event occurred around 4 kilometres southeast of Ekinözü in the Kahramanmaraş province (see ‘Earthquakes and aftershocks’).
In March of last year, Arzu Arslan Kelam at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara and her colleagues published a paper suggesting that the centre of the city of Gaziantep would experience moderate-to-severe damage from a magnitude-6.5 earthquake. Most existing buildings are low-rise brick structures that are very close to each other.
The conflict in Syria has made it difficult for building standards to be enforced. Building collapsed after the earthquake in Syria’s northwestern regions. There are war damaged buildings that have been rebuilt with low-quality materials or whatever materials are available. Things built at a greater expense may have fallen down more quickly. He adds that they haven’t yet found out.
The weather is going to be cold tonight. That means that people who are trapped in the rubble, who might be rescued, could well freeze to death. So these problems continue, he said.
Rescue crews battled freezing temperatures to pull the bodies from the rubble of thousands of buildings that have collapsed throughout southern Turkey and northern Syria. The 72-hour mark since Monday’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake has now passed, a critical time window that experts say is when most survivors from disasters are found.
Trying to Help the Erdospheric Earthquake Victims of Istanbul’s Stock Exchange Crisis: The Case of Emrihan Korkmaz
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.
But critics like Ozel point out that national funds meant for natural disasters like this one were instead spent on highway construction projects managed by 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.”
A lot of restrictions have been placed on aid organizations in Turkey, making it difficult to operate in the country. (Turkey’s embassies, meanwhile, along with an array of nongovernmental organizations and cultural associations, are collecting donations internationally.)
Ozel says the upcoming election in Turkey will weaken Erdogan because of inflation. The government will be one of the victims in the rubble of the earthquake, predicts Ozel.
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 were able to load eighteen semitrucks and send them to the earthquake zone. “They’re filled with blankets, clothes, but there is a more urgent need for food and I want to give them something to eat,” he says as he loads a box under a banner with the image of Erdogan hanging from the ceiling. “However we can get it to them, it doesn’t matter. People there need to eat.
When asked if Erdogan’s government has done enough to help the victims, Soleymez says, “They’ve done what they’re able to do. It’s not a time to talk about politics, but it is a time to help people who need it.
Collapsed buildings, emergency vehicles and tent shelters can be seen in new satellite imagery of earthquake-hit towns in Turkey, revealing the damage from Monday’s devastating earthquake.
The debris of those two buildings, four and six stories tall, litter the street. The building underneath the roofs is collapsing, but one of the roofs appears to be intact.
The town’s “Great Garden,” normally a verdant green space with benches and shops, is now full of tents, likely to shelter survivors and emergency crews.
There are at least two large high-rise buildings that collapsed just south of the park. Some of the northern part of the park has also collapsed.
A significant number of vehicles are seen in the area. Some of the buildings in the Nurdagi that are still standing have a lot of debris around them.
The AFAD camp in Gaziantep, Hatay, Turkey, claimed by a soldier on a deathbed in his late 20s
Faris, a soldier in his late 20s, said there was nothing for them to eat. “There’s no gas, no heating system, no electricity. We don’t have money or any of our cards.”
The man asks to be identified only by his first name, as he is still an active member of the Turkish military, and is at risk of punishment if he criticizes the government.
Many hundreds of people in these camps are from Gaziantep and Hatay. Entire streets and neighborhoods in some villages have collapsed into rubble.
Ozgur, a rescue worker in the town, told his team that they would no longer be able to find someone alive under the rubble. He works in construction and only wants to be identified by his first name for fear that he will be targeted if he gives assistance without government approval.
“People who are coming out from the rubble now, it’s a miracle if they survive. Most of the people that come out now are dead, and they come here,” he said.
AFAD has said it has deployed dozens of food trucks and hundreds of thousands of meals, but opposition politicians and members of the public have widely condemned the organization’s response.
Faris says his family can barely even access the bathrooms for the lines, because there are not enough facilities in the municipal stadium for the hundreds of people temporarily staying there.
The Gaziantep displaced population: The problem of displaced people in Kurdistan, Borneo, Bosnia, during the 2011 earthquake
He and his mother, three sisters, brother and brother-in-law all have deep purple circles under their eyes and are covered in wounds from falling rubble. Their hands are covered in deep gashes from where they dug each other out from their collapsed home, their feet cut from when they finally made it out and had to find their way through the rubble in the cold without shoes.
They were told by the police in Antakya they had to leave, and that they would find food and shelter in Gaziantep. Now, Faris says he regrets the decision to come.
Kurdish migrant families have set up tents to shelter their children during the planting season. Genco Demir, who organized his community’s move to this field, says he and other farmers have been abandoned by the government. In a neighborhood with a lot of poverty, no one has come to check out the homes that were damaged by the earthquake.
Hayat Gezer, a 45 year old Kurdish woman with a traditional tattoo on her chin and a black headscarf says the group is grappling with stress from legal problems. Many members of the community have been imprisoned for crimes such as theft, aiding and abetting terrorism.
The Turkish government has been involved in a conflict with the PKK in southeastern Turkey for more than four decades. This has led to persecution of many Kurds for alleged links to the group.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/11/1155955553/turkey-earthquake-gaziantep-displaced-people
“God is great!” a cry of a young man trapped in a camp in Turkey’s central Kahramanmaras
The desperation in this camp is clear. At one point, a young man tries to take bread from his neighbor’s tent; a violent fight ensues. The young man is being held back by Demir.
Hunger and cold have helped make those in the AFAD camp highly critical of the Turkish government. The soldier swore he wouldn’t vote for him again, even though he voted for the man up for reelection this year.
The Narli family, who had been trapped for over a day, were rescued in central Kahramanmaras at the rate of one dramatic rescue every 133 hours. Nehir Narli was saved by both of her parents.
That followed the rescue earlier in the day of a family of five from a mound of debris in the hard-hit town of Nurdagi, in Gaziantep province, TV network HaberTurk reported. Rescuers cheered and chanted, “God is Great!” The last family member was lifted to safety.
“In some parts of our settlements close to the fault line, we can say that almost no stone was left standing,” he said earlier Saturday from Diyarbakir.
“God is great!” cried a girl inside a collapsed building in the city of Islahiye within hours of the earthquake
In the 132nd hour after the earthquake, a young woman was extricated from the rubble in Elbistan, following the rescue of another person at the same site. Police told the people not to cheer or clap in order to not disrupt the other rescue efforts nearby. There was a blanket over her on the stretcher. Rescuers were hugging each other. Some shouted “God is great!”
Just an hour earlier, a 3-year-old girl and her father were pulled from debris in the town of Islahiye, also in Gaziantep province, and soon after a 7-year-old girl was rescued in the province of Hatay.
The rescues brought smiles to the people who had been devastated by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake on Monday and a powerful aftershock hours later that caused thousands of buildings to collapse.
Not all of it ended well. Rescuers reached a 13-year-old girl inside the debris of a collapsed building in Hatay province early Saturday and intubated her. The medical teams could not free her because she was dead, Hurriyet reported.
A group from the Indian Army’s medical assistance team began treating patients at a temporary field hospital in the southern city of Iskenderun when aid began to arrive.
Wincing in pain, he said he had been rescued from his collapsed apartment building in the nearby city of Antakya within hours of the quake on Monday. He was released without any proper treatment for his injuries after receiving basic first aid.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/11/1156313344/turkey-syria-earthquake-death-toll-survivors
The First Day of Operation for a Turkey’s Makeshift Cemetery: Syrian President Assad, his wife and the Head of the World Health Organization
I buried all the people that I lost, then came here. Canbulat said, counting his dead relatives: “My daughter is dead, my sibling died, my aunt and her daughter died, and the wife of her son” who was 8 ½ months pregnant.
A large makeshift graveyard was under construction on the outskirts of Antakya on Saturday. The field on the northeastern edge of the city was dug up by backhoes and bulldozers in the middle of the night as trucks and ambulances loaded with black body bags arrived. Soldiers directing traffic on the busy adjacent road warned motorists not to take photographs.
A worker with Turkey’s Ministry of Religious Affairs who did not wish to be identified because of orders not to share information with the media said that around 800 bodies were brought the cemetery on Friday, its first day of operation. He said as many as 2,000 had been buried by midday on Saturday.
Many people have no shelter because of the cold. The Turkish government has provided millions of hot meals, tents and blankets but is still struggling to get them to people in need.
Assad and his wife visited Duha’s son Ibrahim who was pulled out of rubble on Friday night, according to a statement by Syria’s state TV.
The head of the World Health Organization came to Syria’s northern city of Abuar on Saturday with 35 tons of equipment, state news agency SANA reported. He said another plane carrying an additional 30 tons of medical equipment will arrive in the coming days.