The Anniversary of the Marmara Earthquake: “Buildings kill, not earthquakes,” says Turkish Interior Minister Yaira Puskulcu
The anniversary of the Marmara earthquake that killed more than 17,000 is marked by Turkey’s Duvar news website. It said: “Buildings kill, not earthquakes. We have to know how to take measures in the event of an earthquake.
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 spoke to four researchers about the seismic activity in the region and what the next few days will bring.
The North Anatolian Fault and the East Anatolian Fault are two major fault that are located on the Anatolian plate. 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 a small amount every year along the East Anatolian Fault. “Half the length of this fault is lit up now with earthquakes.”
A seismologist based in Istanbul claims that people in Turkey are aware of their vulnerability to earthquakes. “This wasn’t a surprise,” says Puskulcu, who last week was touring the cities of Adana, Tarsus and Mersin, and areas of western Turkey, delivering workshops on earthquake awareness.
Most of the buildings in the city of Kahramanmaras have been damaged by the earthquakes, but there are a few that have escaped unscathed.
Things are worse in Syria, where more than 11 years of conflict have made building standards impossible to enforce. The earthquake struck Syria’s northwestern regions, with buildings collapsing in Aleppo and Idlib. Some war-damaged buildings in Syria have been rebuilt with low-quality materials. They might have fallen down quicker than things that were built for more money. He said that they had yet to find out.
The impact of Monday’s earthquake on the lives of displaced people in Turkey: A statement by Prime Minister Emir Soreley during an election stop in Istanbul
Even though experts think that trapped people can live up to a week, the odds of finding more survivors quickly dwindled as the temperature plunged. Rescuers were shifting to thermal cameras to help identify life amid the rubble, a sign that any remaining survivors could be too weak to call for help.
A girl wrapped in a pink blanket was found dead in the rubble of a Turkish building. She’s one of the latest young victims of Monday’s massive quake.
The man believed to have been a Syrian refugee in his 40s was dug out of the rubble, along with many others who died after the earthquake struck.
Rescuers are attempting to reach one or two people that are still alive in a collapsed building. A generator was brought up to power a pneumatic hand-operated drill; the man directing it cleared away the rubble with his bare hands.
He seemed to have spotted signs of life under the crashed plane but rescuers said there was still a lot of work to be done.
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.
New housing for the city of Kahramanmaras, also known as Maras, was one of the highlights of the video that was taken during an election stop by the president.
Flanked by officials, he visited an emergency relief area set up by the country’s disaster management agency, AFAD. Row after row of shining white tents could be seen in the sports stadium, destined to house some of the thousands of families who’ve lost their homes.
The government intended to rebuild the Kahramanmaras region in a year, with emergency housing for those in need, according to a televised announcement by the prime minister.
When asked if the government of Turkey has done enough to help the victims, Sormeley said, “They’ve done what they can do.” 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.
The earthquake that killed thousands of people is not the first disaster that devastated Turkey’s southern hemisphere: A “sacrificial” example of out-of-control inflation
At the bottom of the city, many people could be heard crying and lamenting by the tumbled buildings where they or their relatives lived until disaster struck.
A few took out pictures of their loved ones who are under the rubble and held out a sign 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.
Erdogan and aid workers said the scale of the quake was so large that it was difficult to reach everyone everywhere. Erdogan said nobody would be “left in the streets.”
Istanbul’s stock exchange closed at the end of the month when the first trading showed rapid declines. inflation was already affecting the Turkish economy.
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. The government is making it almost impossible for other organizations to help, and that makes matters worse, if that were even possible.
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’s embassies are among a number of nongovernmental organizations and cultural associations that are collecting donations internationally.
With an election expected by June, Ozel says Erdogan has already been weakened by out-of-control inflation in Turkey. “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 sent 18 semitrucks to the earthquake zone. They’re filled with blankets, clothes, but there is a more urgent need for food,” he says, as he loads a box underneath 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.
The Narli family was saved from a mound of debris in Nurdagi, Gaziantep province, after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake
There are dozens of buildings in the city that have collapsed. In the city center, a group of residential buildings just west of the Hacı Ali Öztürk mosque appear flattened.
The two buildings are four and six stories tall. One of the roofs appears to remain intact, despite the building underneath collapsing.
Tents are in the town’s ” Great Garden” which is usually a verdant green space with benches and shops.
At least two large high-rise buildings, located just south of the park, have collapsed. Three more on the northern side of the park have also collapsed.
There are many vehicles in the area. Some of the buildings that are not gone have a lot of debris around them.
The Narli family was saved in central Kahramanmaras 133 hours after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck. First, 12-year-old Nehir Naz Narli was saved, then 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!” as the last family member, the father, was lifted to safety.
Islahiye, a girl’s rescue, and a death toll survivor in Turkey after a quake
“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.
Melisa Ulku, a woman in her 20s, was extricated from the rubble in Elbistan in the 132th hour since the quake, following the rescue of another person at the same site in the same hour. Ahead of her rescue, police announced that people shouldn’t cheer or clap in order to not interfere with other rescue efforts nearby. She was being carried on a stretcher. Rescuers were hugging. Some yelled “god is great!”
The town of Islahiye in Gaziantep province, where a father and his daughter were trapped, was the site of another rescue just an hour later.
The rescues brought shimmers of joy amid overwhelming devastation days after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake and a powerful aftershock hours later caused thousands of buildings to collapse, killing more than 25,000, injuring another 80,000 and leaving millions homeless.
Not all ended well. Rescuers in Hatay province were able to save a girl inside the debris of a collapsed building early Saturday. The medical teams were supposed to amputate a limb and free her from the rubble, but she died before they could.
A group from the Indian Army’s medical assistance team started treating injured patients in a temporary field hospital in the southern city of Iskenderun after a main hospital was demolished.
He said he was rescued from his destroyed apartment building in the city of Antakya immediately after the earthquake. But after receiving basic first aid, he was released without getting proper treatment for his injuries.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/11/1156313344/turkey-syria-earthquake-death-toll-survivors
The First Day of Operations in Aleppo: Aid for Syria’s Crisis and Implications for the Wellbeing of the Children, Women, and Children
I came here after I buried everyone that I lost. 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.
There was a graveyard under construction on the side of the road. Backhoes and bulldozers dug pits in the field on the northeastern edge of the city as trucks and ambulances loaded with black body bags arrived continuously. Soldiers directing traffic on the busy adjacent road warned motorists not to take photographs.
A Turkey’s Ministry of Religious Affairs worker, who did not wish to be identified, told reporters that 800 bodies were brought into the cemetery on Friday, the first day of operations. He said as many as 2,000 were buried by midday on Saturday.
“People who are coming out from the rubble now, it’s a miracle if they survive. Most of the people that come here are dead, he said.
Temperatures remained below freezing across the large region, and many people have no shelter. The Turkish government has distributed millions of hot meals, as well as tents and blankets, but is still struggling to reach many people in need.
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 President and his wife visited patients in a hospital that was damaged by the earthquake, a base of support for the leader.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, arrived in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo on Saturday, bringing with him 35 tons of medical equipment, state news agency SANA reported. He said another plane carrying an additional 30 tons of medical equipment will arrive in the coming days.
The death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, with many of them women and children. In Turkey, the death toll was 21,043, while in Syria it was 3,553.
The tragedy of Maras: Turkey’s second largest zoning amnesty after the 2011 September 9 earthquake: a warning against future construction projects, says Prime Minister Rechite
ISTANBUL — A few years back, some videos surfaced that show Turkey’s president lauding housing projects that collapsed during the earthquake that killed thousands of people.
“We solved the problem of 144,156 citizens of Maras with zoning amnesty,” Erdogan said, using his term for the construction amnesties handed out to allow contractors to ignore the safety codes that had been put on the books specifically to make apartment blocks, houses and office buildings more resistant to earthquakes.
A breakdown of tens of thousands of building certificates that were granted before the general election in several provinces struck by the earthquake was given by a senior Istanbul city official. The official said there were more than 40,000 certificates in the Gaziantep province.
Turkish media reports says that the amnesty means that some builders were able to proceed with their projects even though they had to pay a fine.
Despite some initial problems with the country’s response to the earthquake, no government could be prepared for a disaster of this magnitude.
The nation’s main association of engineering and architects took a strong attack on amnesties for builders, saying they were an invitation to death.