Death toll passes 9,500 as Turkey and Syria race to find quake survivors
NURDAGI, Turkey — Rescuers raced against time early Wednesday to pull survivors from the rubble before they succumbed to cold weather two days after an earthquake tore through southern Turkey and war-ravaged northern Syria. The death toll passed 9,500 and was expected to rise further.
As temperatures dipped below freezing, rescue crews raced to free those trapped under the thousands of buildings that collapsed in the magnitude 7.8 earthquake.
Rescue workers scrabbled frantically at mounds of rubble, alert for the cries of still-conscious survivors. Aftershocks, including a strong jolt of magnitude 5.7 on Tuesday, added to the difficulty and fear. The last two days have brought dramatic rescues, including small children emerging from mounds of debris more than 30 hours after Monday’s predawn quake. But there was also widespread despair and growing anger at the slow pace of rescue efforts in some areas.
Trained emergency personnel and heavy equipment were in short supply as affected areas waited for domestic and international aid to arrive, held up in some cases by harsh weather conditions that snarled airports.
“It’s like we woke up to hell,” said Osman Can Taninmis, whose family members were still beneath the rubble in Hatay, Turkey’s hardest-hit province. “We can’t respond to absolutely anything. Help isn’t coming, can’t come. We can’t reach anyone at all. Everywhere is destroyed.”
In Syria, residents found a crying newborn still connected by the umbilical cord to her mother, who was dead. The baby was the only member of her family to survive a building collapse in the small town of Jinderis, relatives told the Associated Press.
Search teams from nearly 30 countries and aid pledges poured in. But with the damage spread across several cities and towns — some isolated by Syria’s ongoing conflict — voices crying for help from within mounds of rubble fell silent.
The death toll is in the thousands after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, followed by a magnitude 7.5 quake, struck southern Turkey.
The full scale of the devastation left by the massive temblor — one of the most powerful to hit the region in more than a century — still has yet to become clear. Turkey’s disaster management agency said Wednesday that the country’s death toll had risen to 7,108, bringing the overall total to 9,638, including fatalities reported in neighboring Syria, since Monday’s earthquake and multiple aftershocks.
Monday’s quake and powerful aftershocks cut a swath of destruction that stretched hundreds of miles across southeastern Turkey and neighboring Syria. The shaking toppled thousands of buildings and heaped more misery on a region racked by Syria’s 12-year civil war and refugee crisis.
Turkey is home to millions of refugees from the war. The affected area in Syria is divided between government-controlled territory and the country’s last opposition-held enclave, where millions rely on humanitarian aid to survive.
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Unstable piles of metal and concrete made the search efforts perilous, while freezing temperatures made them ever more urgent, as worries grew about how long trapped survivors could last in the cold. Snow swirled around rescuers in parts of Turkey.
The scale of the suffering — and the accompanying rescue effort — were staggering.
Adelheid Marschang, a senior emergencies officer with the World Health Organization, said up to 23 million people could be affected in the entire quake-hit area, calling it a “crisis on top of multiple crises.”
“It’s now a race against time,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director general. “Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminishes.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said 13 million of the country’s 85 million people were affected, and he declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. More than 8,000 people have been pulled from the debris in Turkey, and some 380,000 have taken refuge in government shelters or hotels, authorities said.
But authorities faced criticism from residents of hard-hit Hatay, sandwiched between Syria and the Mediterranean Sea, who say rescue efforts have lagged. Erdogan’s handling of the crisis could weigh heavily on elections planned for May, and his office has already dismissed the criticism as disinformation.
Nurgul Atay told the Associated Press she could hear her mother’s voice beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in the Turkish city of Antakya, the capital of Hatay province. But rescuers did not have the heavy equipment needed to rescue her.
“If only we could lift the concrete slab, we’d be able to reach her,” she said. “My mother is 70 years old, she won’t be able to withstand this for long.”
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said 1,647 people were killed in Hatay alone, the highest toll of any Turkish province. At least 1,846 people had been rescued there as of Tuesday evening, he said. Hatay’s airport was closed after the quake destroyed the runway, complicating rescue efforts.
In Syria, meanwhile, aid efforts have been hampered by the ongoing war and the isolation of the rebel-held region along the border, which is surrounded by Russia-backed government forces. Syria itself is an international pariah under Western sanctions linked to the war.
Volunteer first responders known as the White Helmets have years of experience rescuing people from buildings destroyed by Syrian and Russian airstrikes in the rebel-held enclave, but they say the earthquake has overwhelmed their capabilities.
Mounir Mostafa, the deputy head of the White Helmets, said they were able to respond efficiently to up to 30 locations at a time but now face calls for help from more than 700.
“Teams are present in those locations, but the available machinery and equipment are not enough,” he said, adding that the first 72 hours were crucial for any rescue effort.
The United Nations said it was “exploring all avenues” to get supplies to the rebel-held northwest.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the road leading to the Bab al Hawa border crossing — the only terminal through which U.N. aid is allowed to enter the rebel-held area — had been damaged by the quake, disrupting deliveries.
Dujarric said the U.N. is preparing a convoy to cross the conflict lines within Syria. But that would probably require the approval of Assad’s government, which has laid siege to rebel-held areas throughout the civil war.
Turkey has large numbers of troops in the border region and has tasked the military with aiding its rescue efforts, including setting up tents for the homeless and a field hospital in Hatay province.
Such a quake would be ‘so powerful that it causes widespread damage and consequently affects lives and livelihoods of all southern Californians,’ a report says.
A navy ship docked Tuesday at the province’s port of Iskenderun, where a hospital collapsed, to transport survivors in need of medical care to a nearby city.
A large fire at the port, caused by containers that toppled over during the earthquake, sent thick plumes of black smoke into the sky. The Defense Ministry said the blaze was extinguished with the help of military aircraft, but live footage broadcast by CNN Turk showed it was still burning.
Vice President Fuat Oktoy said at least 5,894 people had died in the earthquake in Turkey, and 34,810 had been injured.
The region sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in similarly powerful earthquakes that hit northwestern Turkey in 1999.
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Times staff writer Nabih Bulos contributed to this report from Istanbul. Associated Press writers Alsayed reported from Azmarin, Syria, and Fraser from Ankara, Turkey. AP writers David Rising in Bangkok, Zeynep Bilginsoy and Robert Badendieck in Istanbul, Bassem Mroue and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut, Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul and Riazat Butt in Islamabad contributed to this report.
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