The impact of the earthquake on the lives of millions of people in Turkey and Syria – A mother, a father and a daughter’s mother

It’s been a week since a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked Turkey and Syria, claiming the lives of more than 36,000 people. Many tens of thousands more have been injured. Some people may be left homeless.

The father was photographed holding the hand of his daughter, who was pinned under the rubble in the city of Kahramanmaras near the epicenter of the earthquake. He said she died at the moment it hit, with no chance of escape.

Hancer is grieving for other people. The earthquake struck when members of his family had traveled across Turkey to his mother’s house, where his daughter was staying.

There was a big girder on my daughter, so I did not have hope. She was under the rubble but her waist was free. She died during the earthquake. She had no chance of survival.

An activist’s perspective on the Islahiye apartment building site, a city in the wake of a seismic earthquake

“I also talked with AFAD The Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency in Turkey helped as much as they could. But they said they could not provide an excavator to that area,” Hancer said.

“My mother, my two older brothers, my sister-in-law and her little daughter. My daughter was one of seven people. They were all under the rubble,” Hancer said.

He said that Hancer’s home has been badly damaged, and he doesn’t have a place to stay. “We cannot enter our house because we don’t have the means. We are left outside.”

Turkish authorities have arrested dozens of property developers for negligently building collapses in the aftermath of last week’s earthquake.

When volunteer rescue workers pulled a woman out of the rubble of her collapsed apartment in the southeastern Turkish city of Islahiye last Tuesday, she had her arms around her four children.

The collapse of the apartment block made it difiucult for the family to live, but they all stayed together in the final moments.

Me Like Bayar can’t stop crying as she looks at the ruins of the apartment building. Their mother and sister are still underneath the rubble. They have yet to be found. On the night of the earthquake, Sakine’s husband was at a hospital in serious need of treatment for his disease.

Mehmet Gezici and his wife were in Paris at the time of the earthquake and are not as optimistic as their younger relatives. They believe Sakine and Semra are dead.

At the Islahiye apartment building site, dozens of families are still waiting. They sit on black plastic chairs facing the rubble, faces twisted in grief. The air is thick with the smell of corpses, of smoke, of chalky concrete. The clothes people have been wearing for the past week were covered in dust and ash.

The first winch, needed to lift concrete, arrived Wednesday, but could only lift 100 tons. The second arrived Saturday, six days after the earthquake. Volunteer crews have only been on the third floor of the building for a week.

Derya, Sakine, and Semra Demir — a young family in Colaklar, Turkey, after the quake struck

Members of Derya Demir’s family, all Kurdish and originally from the nearby town of Colaklar, have been here since last Monday, shortly after the quake hit. The brother who was the first to arrive was her middle brother Hidayet.

When asked how he is doing, he says, “Incredibly badly,” speaking in a shocked monotone. As he speaks, his eyes dart back to the collapsed building where his sister and mother still lie.

Hidayet says that when he arrived Monday morning, people told him they had heard children’s screams from the direction of Derya’s apartment. For at least some time after the earthquake, the family believes, the children were alive. They think help came too little, too late.

As they wait for crews to find their mother and sister, they hold each other as they warm themselves around a fire that’s been burning for a week next to the site.

They try to share happy memories and speak of loved ones in the present tense. The four young children, and Derya, Sakine, and Semra — all, in their telling, still exist.

My mother and the rest of the family are not answering questions. The man on the stretcher is talking into a cell phone. Crying in disbelief, his friend replies: “Everyone is well… they are all waiting for you… I am coming to you.”

This exchange took place after the rescue of Mustafa Avci, 33, who was saved from the ruins of a collapsed building in Turkey’s southern Hatay province 257 hours after a powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the region.

On Friday, Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca released a video showing the phone call between Avci and his friend, in a powerful reminder that even now – 11 days after the quake struck – finding survivors against the odds remains possible.

The rescue of Avci late on Thursday night came as the death toll across Turkey and Syria rose to at least 43,885 people, according to official figures.

In the video, Avci can be seen wearing a neck brace and appears wide-eyed with hope as he asks: “Did everyone escape okay…? Let me hear what they are saying.

Koca, the minister, said both Avci and a second man, Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu, 26, were rescued around the same time from under the ruins of a private hospital building.

It was uncommon for people to survive more than 100 hours trapped in rubble and most successful rescues occurred within 24 hours, according to CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent.

Aydinli thought his fellow rescue workers were hallucinating when he thought the boy had died with his eyes open. But the child cried out, “Brother! I don’t feel my legs. Save me!”

The boy was rescued from a building and Aydinli said they get tears in their eyes every now and then. He is awake and conscious. Hopefully, he will get better.”

Survival of Syrian civilians in the aftermath of the earthquake killed by a wall fall onto a bed and a triangle: The case of Turkey’s National Medical Rescue Team

Meanwhile, though donations are pouring in from all over the world, many survivors have been left homeless in near-freezing winter temperatures with a lack of access to basic necessities.

A lot of lives have been saved, people have been pulled out of rubble by their friends and family. Mike Ryan, WHO’s emergencies director, said at a briefing on Wednesday that frontline health workers have done amazing work in both countries.

WHO said it was particularly concerned for people in northwestern Syria, a rebel-held region with little access to aid. The UN agency for health had asked the Syrian president to allow in aid at some of the border crossing points.

A tipped wall creating a small cavity is one way several lucky people managed to stay alive under the rubble after last week’s massive earthquake and aftershocks.

Some found themselves, by chance, trapped underneath a wall that fell over onto a bed or another object, creating a small triangle that protected them.

“They have a space to live,” says Osman Turk, a response specialist on Turkey’s National Medical Rescue Team coordinating triage units that help survivors pulled out of the rubble.

In one case, he says, a wall fell onto a refrigerator, giving a 7-year-old girl a protective space — and food — to survive for four days before she was rescued.

First return to the disaster zone with an insurance claim: Kafadenk’s first road to a rescue center after quake two years ago

Ali says that they thought that was the only option. Any minute, any minute, there is something that’s going to come crashing down on our heads and this is the end.

He covered his wife with bedcovers to keep her safe. They cried together, and prayed together. We said that we came from God. We will go back to God,” he says.

Then somehow an opening formed in the wall. He felt the cold, snowy air because it was too dusty to see. That is when he heard the neighbors screaming. My baby’s stuck here. My leg is stuck. My mom is near here. My father is over there.

“He said, ‘I have seven children who are stuck under the rubble over there. I heard you and tried to help you. So I came for you. But now I need to go and deal with my children,’” Ali recalls.

Nine days after the quake, Kafadenk is back in the disaster zone with his brother to retrieve the registration papers from his buried car for an insurance claim. It’s the first time he’s returned to the ruins of his home.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/19/1157801615/turkey-earthquake-survivor-islahiye

Merve’s first experience with a school whose teacher is a highly paid teacher is double what he made in the first grade

Merve teaches kindergarten through the fourth grade. They’ve tried calling their colleagues but can’t reach them. He thinks they’ve died.

Good news comes a few days later: After years of trying, he finally got accepted to teach in a school that pays about triple the salary he used to make.