Hopes fade as rescuers search for survivors of the earthquake
The East Ankaran Fault: An Example of How a Small Earthquake Could Have Caused Its 7.5-Eleven, but It Can Have Had More Than 2 Million Deaths
Deaths in earthquakes are often caused by falling bricks and masonry. According to the US Geological Survey, many people in Turkey who were affected by the earthquake live in structures that are extremely likely to be damaged by shaking, with unreinforced brick masonry and low-rise concrete frames.
The bigger the mainshock the smaller the aftershocks which tend to decrease in seriousness as time goes on. As you can see on the map, there have been many aftershocks along the original quake’s fault line and at a different fault that is connected to the north. The seismologist Alice Gabriel says that the system is very complicated due to the fact that the crust is crushed. That complexity means that what happens in one fault doesn’t stay there. It may have been that the stress that led to the 7.5 quake had been building for some time, and the jolt from the mainshock unleashed it. “It sort of advanced its clock a bit, so that it had the large earthquake that it would have eventually anyway, probably a bit sooner,” says Austin Elliott, an earthquake geologist at the United States Geological Survey. There’s nothing that distinguishes these earthquakes from other earthquakes. It’s just that an earthquake so large changes the stress in the earth’s crust so substantially that it increases the rate of all other earthquakes locally.”
This is unlike the Ring of Fire, which runs along the west coast of the United States. Subduction, where a plate slides below another, is what causes earthquakes in this zone.
The East Ankaran Fault is a well known fault line in southern Turkey. Specifically, this was a strike-slip earthquake, meaning stress built up between two masses of rock moving horizontally in opposite directions until the fault ruptured. It was also very shallow underground, meaning it created more intense shaking at the surface. (The San Andreas Fault in California is also a strike-slip fault—that was the one that destroyed much of San Francisco in 1906.)
The death toll from the massive earthquake that ravaged a border region of Turkey and Syria surpassed 25,000 on Saturday, even as rescue crews pulled more survivors from the rubble.
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.
The earthquake-damaged buildings in Syria: the impact of U.S. sanctions, reconstruction codes and humanitarian aid on the Eastern Anatolian Faults
For three months, the US has softened its sanctions on Syria to allow for relief efforts not to be hampered by the restrictions. The delivery of aid might have been affected by fear of sanctions.
The U.S., Britain, the European Union and Canada give almost all of the humanitarian aid for Syria according to Andrew Tabler, who was once director for Syria on the National Security Council.
Families of 8 or more are sleeping on the ground in white tents set up by Turkish disaster and emergency relief arm, known as AFAD. Wrapped in the clothes they were wearing at the time of the quake, and in donated, colorful blankets, mothers, daughters, brothers and fathers huddle to keep warm.
“Events like this are, of course, absolutely devastating, but they remind us of the importance of scientific research and putting that research into practice through building codes and retrofitting [infrastructure], enforcing policy and things like sharing knowledge to establish best practices,” Lindsay Davis, the earthquake disaster assistance team manager at the U.S. Geological Survey, told NPR.
The two main fault areas in Turkey are the East and North Anatolian Faults. 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. He says that Turkey is moving west about 2 centimetres a year. “Half the length of this fault is lit up now with earthquakes.”
In a study published in March last year, Arzu Arslan Kelam and her colleagues suggested that the centre of Gaziantep might be badly damaged by a magnitude- 6.0 earthquake. This is because most existing buildings are low-rise brick structures that are constructed very close to each other.
In Syria, there have been more than 11 years of conflict that 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 using low-quality materials or “whatever materials are available”, says Rothery. “They might have fallen down more readily than things that were built at somewhat greater expense. We’ve yet to find out,” he adds.
Searching for survivors of the earthquake in Kahramanmaras, Turkey: The body of a 4-year-old girl brought out from the wreckage
Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the odds of finding more survivors were quickly waning amid freezing temperatures. 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.
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 the young people who have died in Monday’s massive earthquake.
A man believed to be a Syrian refugee was dug out of his tomb by the excavators, which looked like it was 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.
There were 350 bodies in the hospital’s mortuary that hadn’t been used by relatives because they had died, according to a man volunteering at the hospital.
The earthquake of Wednesday night killed 10 people and destroyed buildings in Kahramanmaras, Turkey: “We are face to face with a great disaster”
On Wednesday, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Kahramanmaras, a city near the epicenter of the quake, telling survivors that “we are face to face with a great disaster.” There is growing public anger that the rescue response has not been fast enough and that there were shortfalls by the government after the earthquake. The president cited winter weather conditions and destroyed infrastructure, including airport runways, as complicating factors.
He visited a relief area set up by the country’s disaster management agency. The sports stadium was lined with rows of white tents intended to house families who have lost their homes.
In a televised briefing, Erdogan said that the Kahramanmaras region would be rebuilt in one year and that people would get help with emergency housing.
When asked if the Erdogan’s government has done enough to help victims, Soleri says that they have already done what they can. This is not a good time to talk about politics, because we are helping people who need it.
The Turkish government has been criticized. The first day, the president admitted, “we had some pains,” but insisted it was under control by the second and third days.
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.”
Survival in the era of “Catastrophic” Turkish Civil War: Iraq’s Little Help Does Not Come Without a Effort
Aid agencies have warned that the repercussions of a three-month state of emergency declared in 10 Turkish provinces would be “catastrophic”, as millions of vulnerable and displaced people were already relying on humanitarian support.
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.”
The stock exchange closed after rapid declines on initial trading made it necessary to have a circuit breaker. The Turkish economy was already reeling from out-of-control inflation.
Arabic for God is Great, is chanted by the crowd. Volunteers and civil defense groups — themselves earthquake survivors — pull a boy out from the rubble alive in rebel-held northwestern Syria.
There are many trapped under the rubble and rescue efforts continue. Stories of miraculous rescues, like that of a baby girl born under the rubble, are a bullhorn for what’s at stake.
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. Even before the earthquake, the area was devastated by bombs and poverty. Aid was often hampered by politics and the Syrian government.
“Humanitarian aid and international aid haven’t appeared 72 hours after the catastrophic earthquake,” he said, describing the little help that is trickling into the region as a haphazard grassroots effort by individual groups.
“We have to deal with the aftermath of this crisis, which is going to be months and months of work. People who’ve been injured, people with amputations and people with psychological stress. ,” he says. “This is the hard part.”
The World Health Organization estimates that 200,000 people are now homeless in government-controlled Aleppo, where the distribution of international aid is controlled by the regime of Bashar Assad.
“The situation remains grim in north-west Syria where only five percent of reported sites are being covered by search and rescue,” the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report.
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.
More than 360,000 people have been left homeless in southern Turkey as a result of the March 27th earthquake, and the search for bodies from underneath thousands of collapsed buildings continues.
“It’s too late to help”: Emergency Relief in Turkey after the 1999 Case of Rectifiable Anatolian Earthquake
Ozel points out that the national funds meant for natural disasters like this one were used for highway construction by associates of the 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.”
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, along with an array of nongovernmental organizations and cultural associations 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.
A high school student is helping out with the aid effort. In order to allow people like Korkmaz to help after the earthquake, schools throughout Turkey have been ordered closed.
“We’ve managed to load 18 semitrucks and send them to the earthquake zone. He loads a box under a banner with an image of Turkey’s prime minister, saying there’s a more urgent need for food. It’s not really important if we can get it to them. People there need food.”
Emergency Management in Turkey: The aftermath of the 1999-2011 Erdoseismic Emergency Management Event and lessons learned from the Buildings Erdik
Factors have contributed to the earthquake being so lethal. One of them is the time of day it occurred. With the quake hitting early in the morning, many people were in their beds when it happened, and are now trapped under the rubble of their homes.
Additionally, with a cold and wet weather system moving through the region, poor conditions have made reaching affected areas trickier, and rescue and recovery efforts on both sides of the border significantly more challenging once teams have arrived.
The type of collapse which we engineers dislike is called the pancake collapse and it strikes most of the time. You can see how difficult it is to save lives in such collapses. It makes the operation of the search and rescue teams very difficult.”
Major earthquakes that struck Turkey in 1999 and 2011 served as two important lessons to officials that the country’s building construction needed to be retrofitted to combat future disasters.
Many of the buildings that collapsed were likely built before 1999, according to Erdik. Some buildings may not conform to code.
Code consistency is an issue we have tried to tackle with legal and administrative procedures, the codes in Turkey are very modern and similar to US codes. He explained what he was talking about. “We have the permits from municipalities and controls for design, controls for construction. There are things that are lacking.
The 24th Strong Earthquake in the World and the Epi-Line: Seven Survivors rescued from the Ruin of Istanbul
Miracles do happen. More than a week after an initial earthquake in Turkey, seven survivors were rescued from the rubble, according to a report.
“The community, the citizens, they’re the ones that are actually the first line of defense,” he told CNN Wednesday. They did some digging for family, friends, neighbors.
In the immediate aftermath of a devastating earthquake, where someone is trapped in their collapsed home or office building and waiting for help, it’s likely that the first people to help won’t be trained professionals.
In Turkey and Syria, time is the enemy. People die due to medical problems such as bleeding or succumbing to crush injuries, earthquakes that collapse precarious structures with people underneath, and the weather which has fallen below freezing at night. Many die from lacking food and water while awaiting rescue.”
Many may recognize the term “Richter Scale” which scientists previously used for many years, but these days they generally follow the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale (MMI), which is a more accurate measure of a quake’s size, according to the USGS.
A magnitude is the power of a earthquake. The intensity of the shaking can vary depending on the local geography and topography, and depth of the quake. The increase of one number equates to 32 times more energy.
It is the strongest quake in the world since an 8.1 magnitude quake hit a region near the South Sandwich Islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean in 2021, though the remote location of that incident resulted in little damage.
In this case, we need to talk about the epi-line, because we always talk about the epicenter.
Islahiye: Collapsing buildings in the center of a city with massive nuclear damage after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake
The plates move in a strike slip rather than vertically. “Why that matters is because the buildings don’t want to go back and forth. The secondary waves go back and forth as well.
A 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti one year ago is thought to have killed between 220,000 and 300,000 people. millions of people were displaced and 300,000 were injured.
The country’s worst nuclear disaster occurred after walls of water engulfed entire towns, dragged houses onto highways and left a trail of destruction.
In Islahiye, dozens of buildings across the city have collapsed. In the city center, a group of residential buildings just west of the Hacı Ali Öztürk mosque appear flattened.
The debris of those two buildings, four and six stories tall, litter the street. One of the roofs appears to remain intact, despite the building underneath collapsing.
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.
The two large high-rise buildings are located south of the park. Three more on the northern side of the park have also collapsed.
There is a large number of vehicles in the area. Most of the buildings that are still standing have piles of debris around them, like in other parts of the Nurdagi.
The AFAD crisis in Antakya, Turkey, protests a soldier who fled from a hard-hit city and criticizing the government
“There’s nothing for us here to eat,” says a soldier in his mid-20s named Faris, who fled from the hard-hit city of Antakya. “There’s no gas, no heating system, no electricity. We don’t have money or any of our cards.”
He asks to be identified only by his first name because he is still an active member of the Turkish military and risks punishment if he criticizes the government.
Many hundreds of people in these camps are from the villages surrounding Gaziantep. In villages such as Nurdagi, Islahiye and Pazarcik, small satellite districts, entire streets and neighborhoods have collapsed into rubble.
Late Thursday night in Nurdagi, a rescue worker named Ozgur says his team no longer expects to find anyone alive under the rubble. He works in construction for a large holding company and asks to only be identified by his first name for fear of reprisal for providing assistance without direct government approval.
“People who are coming out from the rubble now, it’s a miracle if they survive. He said that most of the people who come here are dead.
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 and his family can’t go to the bathroom because there are not enough places in the stadium for the hundreds of people who are temporarily staying there.
A Kurdish migrant family in Gaziantep, Turkey, loses their livelihood due to a long-term volcanic earthquake
He and his family have deep purple circles in their eyes, they are all 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 police in Antakya that they had to evacuate, and that they could find shelter and food in Gaziantep. Faris regretted the decision to come.
There, several Kurdish migrant families have set up the tents they usually use during the planting season. Genco says the government has left him and other farmers out in the cold. In their impoverished neighborhood of Sekiz Subat, less than 2 miles away, they say no one has come to inspect or repair their homes, damaged by the earthquake.
Hayat Gezer, a 45-year-old woman with a traditional Kurdish tattoo on her chin and a black headscarf, says the group is grappling with the additional stress of legal problems. She says that members of their community have been imprisoned for a range of crimes.
The Turkish government has been involved in a conflict with the PKK in southeastern Turkey for 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
Towards a peaceable future in Turkey: the survival of the Narli family in Nurdagi after the Monday night temblor
The desperation in this camp is clear. A violent fight broke out when a young man tried to take bread from his neighbor’s tent. The young man is being held back by Demir.
Hunger and cold made those in the camp highly critical of the Turkish government. The soldier vows he will not cast a vote again for the man who is up for reelection this year.
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 cheered, and shouted, “God is great!” as the last family member, the father, 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.
The shock of the 132nd hour after the earthquakes killed a young girl and a girl in the village of Islahiye
In the 132nd hour after the earthquakes, a woman in her 20s was extricated from the rubble of a home in Elbistan, following the rescue of another person. 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 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 as the damage from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake and aftershock was overwhelming and more than 25,000 people were killed.
Not everything ended so well. Rescuers pulled a 13-year-old girl out of the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay province early Saturday. But she died before the medical teams could amputate a limb and free her from the rubble, Hurriyet newspaper reported.
As aid continued to arrive, a 99-member group from the Indian Army’s medical assistance team began treating the injured in a temporary field hospital in the southern city of Iskenderun, where a main hospital was demolished.
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. 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 World Health Organization Operations in Syria’s Northwestern Rebel-held Region, Spokesman Mohammad Melayu Aleppo, Declared
I came here after burying everyone that I lost. Canbulat said “My daughter is dead, my sibling is dead, my aunt and her daughter died, and the wife of the son of their mother was 8 months pregnant.”
A large makeshift graveyard was under construction on the outskirts of Antakya on Saturday. 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 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. By midday on Saturday, he said, as many as 2,000 had been buried.
Many people are without a place to sleep due to the cold temperatures across the large region. The Turkish government has given out millions of hot meals, tents and blankets, but it’s difficult to reach people in need.
Syrian state TV said Assad and his wife Asma on Saturday morning visited Duha Nurallah, 60, and her son Ibrahim Zakariya, 22, who were pulled out of rubble the night before in the nearby coastal town of Jableh.
According to SANA, the head of the World Health Organization arrived in Syria’s north city of Aleppo on Saturday with 35 tons of medical equipment. He said that another plane will arrive in the next few days carrying more medical equipment.
The total death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166 many of them women and children. The total dead in Syria was 3,553, while in Turkey, officials counted 21,043 dead through Saturday.
The earthquake happened in the middle east: My daughter and Is my mother. She is my mother, she is my sister-in-law
It was awful. As soon as I heard the news, I rushed there. And with my own bare hands, with my own means, with great effort I tried to pull out my daughter. Hancer said he could not save his daughter.
I had no hope because my daughter had a large girder on her. Her waist was free but under the rubble she was crushed. “Unfortunately, during the earthquake, she died right there and then. She was not able to have a chance of survival.
I talked with the other person. They helped as much as they could. But they said they could not provide an excavator to that area,” Hancer said.
They are my mother, my two older brothers and my sister-in-law. There were seven people including my daughter. They were all under the rubble,” Hancer said.
Hancer’s home has also been badly damaged, he said, adding that he doesn’t have anywhere to stay. “We cannot enter our house because we don’t have the means. We are left outside.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/middleeast/turkey-quake-man-daughter-hand-photo-intl/index.html
Emergency Response in Turkey After the Last Week’s Erdospheric Erupture: Thousands of Buildings, Millions of Homes, and All That
Meanwhile, amid growing public anger over the government’s response to the disaster, Turkish authorities have carried out a wave of arrests of property developers accused of “negligence” over building collapses due to last week’s earthquake.
A verdant olive grove was cleaved into two during last week’s devastating earthquake in Turkey, creating a valley 984 feet long (about 300 meters) that now divides the area.
The earthquake that began last Monday made an incredible sound in the area where it occurred, according to the man who lives in the neighborhood.
He implored for experts to inspect the area for possible future damage. “This is not a small town, there are 1000 houses, and 7000 thousand people live here,” he said. If it had been closer, it would have occurred in the center of town.
According to Lanning and other emergency and disaster response experts, effective help often comes from the immediate community, even if the area is hit by an earthquake.
“While search and rescue operations are critical, research is very clear that mitigation and prevention are the most effective when it comes to minimizing disaster losses,” Davis with the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Natalie Simpson is the chair of operations management and strategy at the University at Buffalo School of Management.
“It takes a long time at each building, to have to listen and carefully remove pieces of the building debris to get to people,” Lanning said. And with the scene in Turkey “there’s thousands and thousands of these buildings,” he added.
How Do Emergency Response Teams in Turkey and Syria Handle an Earthquake? “What’s the Best thing to do when you can’t get any help,” she said referring to Simpson and Simpson
Knowing the importance of quick, local aid, the Community Emergency Response Team was developed in the U.S. It’s a FEMA program that trains volunteers across all 50 states with basic disaster response skills.
What to do in an earthquake, how to get water and check on neighbors are some of the things that it teaches people.
There are factors, like types of injuries and how many search and rescue teams are on the scene, that contribute to how likely a trapped person is to survive. He noted that if a trapped individual is uninjured or has minor injuries, they can last up to a week under a collapsed building.
Simpson with the University at Buffalo said she wishes each time disaster strikes there would be an immediate mobilization of rescue crews and military. She said that it wasn’t always the case and it was in Turkey and Syria.
Simpson said failure to pick up on the fact that this is an emergency was the most important failure in emergency response. waiting to get more information is the instinct of the person.
“All of them, including the aftermath of an earthquake, you’re not in Kansas anymore,” she said. “These are not normal conditions so one of the traps we fall into is, ‘Oh gosh, what’s the best thing to do at this time’.” It’s alright. Let’s move.
In many areas around the world, including Turkey, the military is best equipped to operate in a disaster-transformed landscape and to open airstrips to get aid in quickly, she said.
But the Turkish government failed to immediately mobilize its military to aid in the direct rescue efforts or to establish those all-important field hospitals and airstrips, according to an analysis published by the Middle East Institute, a nonprofit think tank.
“There’s a very important lesson here: It’s never too early to activate your large-scale response when you’re not getting any information out of a region,” she said. “I think that that will make an impression on decision-makers elsewhere, that will actually help people in the future.”
Lanning said this latest disaster hammers home how important it is for global communities in earthquake-prone areas to strengthen infrastructure to withstand a disaster like the one in Turkey and Syria.
The type of construction and buildings that are constructed in that area is what caused a lot of the damage.
This is despite the knowledge that concrete buildings are not the best at withstanding earthquakes. They are very easy to construct and can easily hide imperfections, he said.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/16/1156636019/the-earthquake-in-turkey-and-syria-offers-lessons-and-reminders-for-disaster-res
The U.N. response to the Second Defne Earthquake and Implications for Emergency Services and Rehabilization in Turkey
Much of the work to analyze this latest disaster and what went wrong or right will come in the following months and years. It’s incredibly valuable work, according to Lanning.
Rescuers on Friday removed a survivor from the rubble of a collapsed building in the district of Defne, in hard-hit Hatay province, more than 11 days after the powerful earthquake struck.
Hakan Yasinoğlu, 45, spent 278 hours beneath the rubble, according to Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency. TV footage showed him being carried on a stretcher to an ambulance.
According to reports, Neslihan Kilic was extricated from the rubble of a building after being trapped for 258 hours.
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, said the trucks are carrying a “multitude” of items from six U.N. agencies — including tents, mattresses, blankets, winter clothes, cholera testing kits, essential medicines, and food from the World Food Program. The border gates of Bab al-Hawa are where they crossed.
Meanwhile, The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, said it was working closely with Turkey to determine the steps needed to rehabilitate infrastructure in the agricultural sector damaged by the quake, including irrigation systems, roads, markets and storage capacity.
The Food and Agricultural Organization said that the earthquakes in Syria were threatening to disrupt crop and livestock production, and threatening immediate and long-term food security.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, reported that when the numbers from other, smaller crossings are tallied, the number of earthquake victims returned to Syria for burial is 1,745.
Turkish citizens who have temporary protection cards can cross into Syria without having to apply for a travel permit from Turkish authorities. Normally Turkey would look into Syrians who crossed into Syria without a permit having relinquished their status as asylum-seekers. They would not be allowed back into Turkey for five years if they failed to surrender their protection cards.
Spain says it will take in some 100 Syrian refugees in Turkey that have suffered in the earthquake. Migration Minister José Luis Escrivá said the refugees would be those considered most vulnerable and badly affected by the quake.
Making the announcement late Thursday, Escrivá said “the earthquake reminds us of Syria’s drama in a tremendous way and we are going to try to help within our possibilities.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/17/1157835409/turkey-earthquake-survivors
Donor Fatigue in Syria after the 2006 World Government Summit: A Case Study of “Unspeakable Heartache” for Children and Families
There are 1,589 children that the state is caring for who were separated from their families during the earthquake, according to the Turkish Vice President.
Syria has lost the attention of the world as well as many other crises, says a director of the United Nations children’s agency. The World Government Summit is an annual forum of political and thought leaders.
Mardini says that donor support is crucial to the continuation of its work of reunification of orphan children with their relatives and distribution of Sanitation Services and Safe drinking water to people in earthquake-hit areas.
“We know that there is an immense need, but it’s essential that they help us get the aid where we need it most, so that we don’t have to go somewhere else,” she says.
Aid groups are trying to drum up more money for Syrians while the attention is on the earthquakes, but the road to recovery won’t be easy.
He too spoke with NPR at the World Government Summit in Dubai. He returned to the U.A.E. after traveling to Syria, where the World Health Organization was delivering tons of medical supplies.
The U.N.’s humanitarian relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, visited areas affected by the earthquakes and described situations of “unspeakable heartache.”
A Syrian living in Turkey shared his video about psychological trauma among Syrians on social media.
A thirteen-year-old boy was the one who survived three days under the rubble. He’d suffered a leg injury and was now living in a car with his younger sister and father. Another sister and his mother had died in the earthquakes.
Abu Lebda said that a Syrian man abruptly leaving a bus after he said he heard his children call for him from the rubble of his home.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1157783760/turkey-syria-earthquake-aid-donor-fatigue
Istanbul’s First Earthquake: Where is the State? An Empirical Analyse of the 1999 Aegean Emergency Preparedness
Meanwhile, the U.N. refugee agency says it closed last year with only 56% of its funding needs met, leaving a $4.7 billion budget shortfall. The agency, which assists millions of Syrian refugees, says to date it has received just 15% of its global funding requirements for 2023 — a budget that’s yet to factor in the impact of the earthquakes.
Erdogan’s government has been stung by criticism about its initial response to this month’s earthquake, with prosecutors launching an investigation into a lawyer who tweeted “where is the state?” in criticism of the response. The lawyer was reportedly charged with “insulting the state.”
He says that at the moment, people are sad and scared that this could happen in Istanbul as well because there are so many buildings at risk.
Ozgenler’s answer is yes. He says improvements put on the books after a 1999 Aegean earthquake killed more than 17,000 people were a good start — but much more needs to be done.
Critics have pointed to so-called “zoning amnesties” given to contractors. These allow for buildings to be constructed quickly and without safety measures intended to strengthen the building’s ability to resist an earthquake.
He says many acted to increase their commercial space by knocking out load-bearing walls or columns, compromising the structural integrity of the building.
“They have blood on their hands, and that makes me really, really angry when I see this,” Ozgenler says. If there is no walls in the building, the building falls over like this.
Building owners and tenants can be blamed for weak buildings in earthquake prone areas, but it’s up to the state to regulate that and make sure the building codes are enforced, says analyst Sinan Ulgen at Istanbul’s Center for Economics and Foreign Policy.
Ulgen says there will undoubtedly be a backlash of some kind against the government’s initial quake response, which may be why Erdogan has already pledged to provide shelter for all of the estimated 20 million people affected by the quake who need housing within a year.
This is all happening just weeks before elections were expected to be called, possibly to be held in May. It is not certain whether the elections will be possible in the earthquake zone because of the difficulties of holding a vote in heavily damaged cities.
According to Ulgen there are no poll numbers to show the political impact of the disaster, but it will be a handicap for the government.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/20/1157837625/turkey-earthquake-damage-istanbul-safety-readiness
The earthquake that struck in the Hatay province on Feb. 6 caused by an inspiral of a million people and injured more than 130 people
He says the elections are constitutional, but that delaying the vote will require parliamentary approval, which he sees as highly unlikely.
One more layer of uncertainty has arisen due to the lack of announcement of a presidential candidate from the opposition coalition.
The quake’s epicenter was in the province’s Defne district, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said Monday, adding that there have been 26 aftershocks since.
In northwest Syria, there have been more than 130 injuries, the White Helmets volunteer rescue group said Monday. The quake also led to the collapse of a number of buildings that were already hit by the previous earthquake.
“Our teams are working to take the injured to hospitals, inspect the affected villages and towns, and remove rubble to open the roads for the ambulances,” the White Helmets said.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) initially reported the quake as being of magnitude 6.4 at a depth of 10 kilometers before revising it down to 6.3 magnitude.
Officials have been urging the public to stay away from buildings. The public was not asked to enter the damaged buildings, but to take their belongings.
“We went back to our house and this shock happened again and we went out… may God help us,” said Zahir, who lives in a town between the cities of Iskenderun and Antakia, in Turkey’s Hatay province.
On Sunday, Turkey’s disaster management authority said it had ended most search and rescue operations nearly two weeks after the earthquake struck as experts say the chances of survival for people trapped in the rubble this far into the disaster are unlikely.
Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said at least six people were trapped. He said that the people who died were from the cities of Samandag, Anakya and Defne.
Turkish public broadcaster TRT broadcast live footage of rescue crews operating at a collapsed building in the city of Antakya, one of the worst-hit cities in the Feb. 6 earthquake. It said residents were recovering belongings from their building — damaged in the Feb. 6 earthquake — when it collapsed after the ground shook again on Monday.
Turkey’s public broadcaster aired a video it said was of a person crying out for help after he tried to rescue a cat from a damaged building and got caught in debris when Monday’s earthquake struck.
Swinging chandeliers in a baklava restaurant: the waiter’s family fled and slept with blankets on a second floor
At a Gaziantep baklava restaurant, patrons on the second floor calmly walked outside and a chandelier swung lightly. A waiter’s family escaped their house and took blankets to sleep in the restaurant.
