Hundreds of killed in Istanbul and Syria after the five-day Erdoshan-Kuz’tu earthquake: a model for the evacuation of isolated buildings

ANTAKYA, Turkey— Rescue crews on Saturday pulled more survivors, including entire families, from toppled buildings despite diminishing hopes as the death toll of the enormous quake that struck a border region of Turkey and Syria five days ago surpassed 25,000.

Teams of workers were still trying to find more survivors from the early Monday morning quake as the death toll surpassed 11,000, The Associated Press reported. The Turkish government reported that 8,500 people had died in the country from the earthquake. The death toll in Syria has risen to more than a thousand in both government-held and rebel-controlled areas.

It was hard to reach everyone everywhere because of the large scale of the earthquake. Erdogan said nobody would be “left in the streets.”

In the city of Antakya, resident Hamideh Mansulolu stood outside what used to be the seven-story residential building where she lived with her family, waiting to hear whether her son, Sedat, survived.

How a Child was Born to Die in the Ruin of a Building in the Turkish Capital City of Kahramanmaras

After the earthquake struck, it was four days before any international aid started to trickle into northwest Syria via the single border crossing authorized for UN aid deliveries at Bab al-Hawa. The first shipment of aid carrying tents, shelter materials and relief items was scheduled before the earthquake. There wasn’t any assistance with our rescue efforts.

Dozens of countries have sent help to Syria, including Iran and Libya, and thousands of rescue workers are currently on their way to Turkey.

A huge amount of tents have been distributed by the national emergency management agency, but the sheer scale of the disaster has left many without shelter.

The body of a 4-year-old girl wrapped in a pink blanket was brought out Wednesday from the wreckage of a building in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras. She is one of many young people who have died in Monday’s big earthquake.

The man believed to be a Syrian refugee in his 40s was brought out of the rubble after the earthquake, and was found resting on a mattress.

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. 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 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.

Rescue efforts continue as untold others remain trapped under the rubble. Stories of miraculous rescues, like that of a baby girl born under the rubble, are a bullhorn for what’s at stake.

Heavy machinery has been increasingly brought into areas where a day earlier cautious searchers relied on their hands to dig through the rubble. The risk posed to those trapped alive must be weighed against their chances of surviving many more hours in the bitter cold.

The aftermath of the 2001 earthquake struck in Kahramanmaras: Emergency housing and relief for families affected by the quakes, officials told CNN

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.

He was accompanied on his visit by officials from the country’s disaster management agency. 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.

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.

“We can never let our citizens stay on the streets,” Erdogan said. “Our state is using all its resources with AFAD and municipalities. We will continue to do that.

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.” He said the government would give 10,000 Turkish liras (500 dollars) to help families impacted.

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, many people could be heard crying and lamenting by the tumbled buildings where they or their relatives lived until 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.”

The earthquake left tens of thousands injured, with the number of deaths increasing by the day.

Millions of people in northwest Syria are relying on humanitarian support, despite a three-month state of emergency declared in 10 Turkish provinces.

Istanbul’s stock exchange closed until Feb. 15 after initial trading showed rapid declines, triggering a circuit breaker when declines reached 7%. Inflation in Turkey had already hit out-of-control.

Rescue efforts and humanitarian aid have failed in a rebel-held area in Syria, according to a photojournalist and resident of the city of Kellieh

Voice messages from people sharing traumatizing stories from the ground have not stopped flooding Al-Dahhan’s phone.

The world knows of these rescues because of Karam Kellieh, a resident and photojournalist who lives in the opposition-controlled territory. The area is home to some 4 million people displaced by the decade-long Syrian civil war. Bombs and poverty devastated the area before the earthquake. Politics and the Syrian government made it difficult to get aid.

He described the little help that is trickled into the region as a patchwork of efforts by individual groups.

“Rescue efforts are being carried out by poorly equipped civil defense groups and civilians are trying to help,” Kelliah said. Everyone is waiting for international rescue and aid just to be able to process what’s happened.

11,000 families in the rebel-held part of Syria are now homeless after the earthquake, local authorities say. According to the United Nations, there have been up to 2,000 deaths and thousands of injuries.

In north-west Syria, only five percent of the sites are being searched, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

People are digging with their own hands in many areas, but the situation is particularly dire in northwestern Syria, where there is little heavy machinery to lift rubble. Power outages have resulted in fuel shortages in hospitals.

Mohammed Juma’s family were killed in a pile of rubble and he sleeps on top of it. In the freezing nights, the 20-year-old and others in this town — still dazed and in shock — burn possessions found in the debris for heat.

In the northwest of Syria, residents heard the screams of those trapped under the rubble but no machinery or equipment could be used to save them.

NPR traveled to a rebel-held area in Syria where there were no international crews of rescuers, no ambulances, and no trucks filled with machinery or medical aid. The border crossing into Syria was empty and silent.

Rescue of the Narli family in Sawran, Syria, after the sacrificial collapse of his home on top of his house

Mohammed Juma claimed that his family was alive after their home collapsed on top of them. Juma and his neighbors pulled at the shattered concrete for hours until their hands bled, but the effort was futile.

Now the Syrian civil defense teams are using the few excavators they do have to recover the dead. On Friday morning in Jinderis, at least 850 bodies had been pulled from the rubble. Zakaria Tabakh, 26, remembers cuddling his son, 2-year-old Abdulhadi, to sleep and laying him in his bed, where he was killed by the falling debris. Tabakh’s wife died in the bed beside him. He said that few friends were able to come to the burial because they were too busy burying their own loved ones.

They have been left without anything after years of war. Tens of thousands now live with no access to basic services in tents set up in the olive groves where the mud is thick, making it difficult for children to play outside.

Less than one hour’s drive from one of the open border crossings, the town of Sawran now has no running water. The destroyed home of the Turki family is on one side of the main street. A family of seven were killed outside. In February of 2017, the Syrian government unleashed sarin on the population, killing 89 people, which led the neighbors to move to Sawran.

Dramatic rescues were being broadcast on Turkish television, including the rescue of the Narli family in central Kahramanmaras 133 hours after the 7.8-magnitude temblor struck Monday. 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 celebrated and shouted, “God is great!” The father was the last family member lifted to safety.

Turkey Syria — Aftershocks in Elbistan and Hatay: Life, Death, and Survival in the Ruins

“In some parts of our settlements, we can tell you that there was no stone left standing,” he said.

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 covered in a blanket on the stretcher. Rescuers were hugging. Some people 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 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. A girl is trapped inside the collapsed building in Hatay province and Rescuers intubated her early Saturday. She died before the medical team could remove a limb from her that was trapped in the rubble.

Even though experts say a person can live for a week or more, the odds of finding more survivors are quickly diminishing. 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.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/11/1156313344/turkey-syria-earthquake-death-toll-survivors

The Indian Army is helping people find their feet. Soldiers are helping the dead in the field of Iskenderun, Turkey’s largest city

As aid continued to arrive a group from the Indian Army started treating the injured in a temporary field hospital in Iskenderun, where the main hospital was demolished.

He said that he had been saved from the collapsed apartment building within hours of the earthquake on Monday, even though he was in pain. But after receiving basic first aid, he was released without getting proper treatment for his injuries.

I buried everyone I lost, then I came here. Canbulat said his daughter is dead, his sibling is dead, his aunt is dead, and his wife is 8 months pregnant.

A graveyard is being built on the outskirts of Antakya. 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 warned motorists not to take pictures on the road.

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 by midday that as many as 2,000 had been buried.

It’s a miracle if they survive because the building was so badly damaged. He said that most of the people that come out now are dead.

Many survivors have been homeless due to lack of access to basic necessities, despite the amount of donations pouring in.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, is on a mission to help the survivors of the Aleppo earthquake

A hospital in the coastal city of Laquipia is a bases of support for President Assad and his wife.

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. There will be another plane with an additional 30 tons of medical equipment coming soon, he said.

The voice messages he has received chronicle their pain, so it makes it hard to sleep. He is woken by their cries and has feelings of guilt. He is worried that thousands of people back home in Syria are still buried alive under the rubble as he rests.

“It’s destroying me,” Al-Dahhan, 31, told CNN. “When it happened, I was receiving constant voice messages, jumping from number to number on WhatsApp, each one is someone crying, telling me they are seeing people dying around them. I can’t stop hearing them.”

Al-Dahhan, a Syrian-American aid worker for Mercy-USA, a Michigan-based non-profit working in communities across the globe, has spent the past week traveling around the United States to raise money for earthquake relief. He says he has raised $100,000 by raising money at the schools and places of worship.

Meanwhile, on the ground, his colleagues who survived have been in a race against time, using the funds raised by workers like Al-Dahhan to help rescue those still trapped under the rubble and deliver relief to shell-shocked survivors.

In his voice, Al-Dahhan says he has not eaten properly and can’t sleep for more than 10 minutes at a time since the earthquake.

“At least I get a little bit of relief, knowing what I’m doing matters, because the more I can fundraise here, the more it helps out there,” he said. “But I am in constant stress that I’m not doing enough and I need to keep going. I feel guilty when I sleep. I need to be awake every second. I have to be working. I want to know what is happening. I think I’m operating here but my mind and soul are still there.

Do We Need Something To Do for Syria? A Syrian-American Earthquake Raising Money Relief for a Family in Latakia

Another story is about a family that lost two sisters in the earthquake, leaving their children orphaned. The death of their brother after learning of his sisters’ deaths left his children without a father.

I thought it was an Israeli airstrike since we have had a few of those in Latakia over the past few years. When I saw the reports of an earthquake in the middle of the night, I wanted it to be an airstrike.

He spent the next hours in agony, he said, watching images of death and devastation pour into his phone with no way of knowing if his friends or family were trapped under the rubble.

Al-Dahhan said that the only organizations that were able to provide aid were the ones already there.

Syrians in the US panicked when the opportunity to rescue survivors decreased as the clock ran out, and they were forced to raise money for organizations on the ground.

Nour Al Ghraowi, who immigrated to New York City from Damascus, Syria, following the civil war in Syria that started in 2011, is also helping through her work as a communications coordinator with Karam Foundation.

The world has been quiet, but there are organizations and people still fighting for them, who were never stopped for a moment, said Al Ghraowi.

The UN estimates 300,000 lives have been killed in the country’s civil war, most of which were in the northwest area of the country.

Zahra emphasized the urgency of donations to provide immediate needs, including food, shelter, non-food items, and medicine, but said providing Syrians with mental-health care is also critical.

One of the biggest issues contributing to these mental health issues experienced by Syrians in the country and in the US, she says, is the feeling of being abandoned and forgotten.

He said that Syria was a country that is mired in war, poverty, and extremists. We’re tired of pointless summits that are supposed to solve our crisis. We need something to be done.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/us/syrian-american-earthquake-raise-money-rescue-relief/index.html

The Red Crescent Society of Palestine: Mental Health and Emergency Services to Earthquake-Induced Mental Instability in the Dialogue of Syria

“It’s only natural to have that reinforcement of asking themselves, ‘Do I matter as much or will I be forgotten again?’” she added. “‘Will I just be another statistic or another undignified picture that is circulated but not humanized?’”

According to the Red Crescent Society, the first group to send a team to provide mental-health support to earthquake victims was from Palestine. The team of Palestinians, along with local volunteers, is providing mental health services to about 300 children and their families in shelters and hospitals, who are suffering from severe trauma and depression as a result of the earthquake.

Some, including Al-Dahhan, have experienced psychological triggers, including photos and videos of buildings toppling during the earthquake, scenes nearly identical to the aftermath of airstrikes that have killed and displaced thousands during the war.

The war that happened really messed me up so I built walls. Al-Dahhan wanted to get hurt like that again. I feel those walls crumbling from this earthquake. I cannot think of anything else because I am remembering things I don’t want to remember.

Others, like Zahra and Alsamman, are grappling with survivor’s guilt, possessed with a sinking feeling that no matter what they do, it won’t be enough.

“I can certainly say, without a doubt, as Syrians, we don’t have time to almost mourn or process our grief because we’re trying to use energy, time, resources, all hours of the day, to keep Syria in the news, keep Syria in conversation,” Zahra said.

We do not have time to heal the wounds, we are shouting from the rooftops, please help, please help, we need your help, please help.

The hope of finding survivors has faded. When we pull more bodies from the rubble, I’m sad because we didn’t get the help we needed in time.

Help raising awareness, funds and basic items like food and clothing is needed by organizations on the ground. But the issue doesn’t stop with short-term relief efforts, Zahra says, arguing that activists must pressure the US and other countries to “activate disaster mechanisms and push for access to hard-to-reach communities.”

The Syrian crisis, Alsamman said, “has become an afterthought, a footnote to mention when talking about the geopolitical complexity of the Middle East.”

Rescue of the White Helmets in Syria: a community of volunteers and their role in providing shelter to civilians, children and families during the earthquake

Across the street, workers searched for bodies in the rubble, their hopes of finding survivors dimming so long after the building fell. A niece and nephew of Ms. Omac’s husband were under the debris. She was waiting for the rescuers to pull their relatives out, alive or dead.

Many people cobbled debris together to erect what they could: One family, numbering about a dozen, built a shelter of cardboard and tarp over a flatbed truck, with blankets and thin mattresses in the beds.

The Turkish Red Crescent, a humanitarian group, said it was speeding up the production of tents to house people after Turkish news media reported a shortage of temporary housing and poor sanitary conditions for the homeless.

Martin Griffiths, the top humanitarian chief at the United Nations, said on Monday that the window for rescuing people from the rubble was “coming to a close,” and that the focus was moving to providing homes, food, schooling and psychological care to victims.

The White Helmets are a group of volunteers who work to save lives and strengthen communities in Syria. The views he expresses are his own. There is more opinion on CNN.

The search and rescue efforts in northwest Syria following the earthquake were described by the UN undersecretary for humanitarian affairs as unparalleled in history. The White Helmets received no help from the UN during the most important moments of their rescue operations and now they don’t have any support from the UN to help in the recovery and rehabilitation efforts.

We are the only organization that has both training and equipment for heavy search and rescue. The volunteers have been doing the impossible, and I am humbled by their selflessness and dedication.

The UN hasn’t succeeded in delivering humanitarian aid to the people in the face of Earthquake al-Saleh: A Sky News interview with Griffiths

The UN let down the people in northwest Syria by failing to act quickly, which was acknowledged by me when I met with him on Sunday. We haven’t succeeded the people in north-west Syria. They rightly feel abandoned. Looking for international help that hasn’t arrived,” Griffiths said on Twitter on Sunday.

The UN has failed to respond quickly to the catastrophe. When I asked the UN why help had failed to arrive in time, the answer I received was bureaucracy. Red tape made it difficult for the UN to do their job in the face of one of the most deadly catastrophes to hit the world in years.

The UN’s misguided approach of asking the Security Council to authorize aid access through two border crossings wasted valuable time, according to a recent Sky News interview with Griffiths. Humanitarian organizations and legal analysts disagree with one another about the necessity for aid entry to be politicized.

The UN said on Monday that the Assad regime would open two more crossing points in northwest Syria for three months to receive humanitarian aid. The opening of these crossing points will allow more aid to go in, according to the Secretary-General.

Russia has used its veto at the Security Council many times to shut border crossings, reducing the routes for aid delivery via Turkey to a single entry. Opening additional crossings on a temporary basis is not enough — more cross-border routes were already sorely needed.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/opinions/white-helmets-syria-united-nations-earthquake-al-saleh/index.html

How a young man was trapped in the rubble after a devastating earthquake in Turkey is still alive, as Turkish health minister Fitzettin Koca tells CNN

The local communities that were affected by the disaster helped us the most by lending their cars and heavy vehicles to help dig, and by donating fuel to keep themselves warm.

How is my mom? The man on the stretcher is speaking into a cell phone. His friend is in disbelief and says everyone is okay and they are all waiting for him.

The rescue of a man who was trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building in Turkey’s Hatay province for 261 hours after a powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake happened in February was emotional.

Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca released a video of Avci and his friend talking on the phone, showing the possibility that they can still be alive eleven days after the earthquake.

As the death toll across Turkey and Syria rose, Avci was rescued late on Thursday night.

In the video, Avci can be seen wearing a neck brace and is wide-eyed with hope as he asks “Did everyone escape okay?” If for a second, let me hear their voices.

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.

CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who is in southern Turkey, said it was unusual for people to survive more than 100 hours trapped in rubble and most successful rescues usually occurred within 24 hours.

Aydinli said he thought his fellow rescue workers were “hallucinating,” and he assumed the boy had “died with his eyes open.” But the child cried out. I don’t feel anything in my body. Save me!

Aydinli said that they get tears in their eyes when they talk about the boy’s rescue. He is awake and alert. Hopefully, he will get better.”

“A lot of lives have been saved, a lot of people have been pulled from rubble by their neighbors, by their friends, by their sons, daughters, mothers, fathers. The World Health Organization’s emergencies director, Mike Ryan, told a news briefing in Geneva that frontline health workers had done amazing work in both countries.