Hopes fade as rescuers search for survivors of the earthquake
Puskulcu, a seismologist in Turkey, visiting ruined buildings with the Erdoirnuuacn earthquake awareness campaign
Rescue workers in Turkey are racing against time to save people who are trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings, because of the cold weather.
The UN said that almost 11 million people have been affected by the disaster in Syria. The “White Helmets” civil defense group has reported at least 3,384 deaths in Syria, which includes 2,037 dead in rebel-held areas and 1, 347 deaths in government controlled areas. According to the authorities, over 5,000 people have been injured across the affected territories.
People in Turkey are aware of their earthquake susceptibility, according to a seismologist in Istanbul, who works for the Turkish Earthquake Foundation. “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.
“I know my son is inside and I think he’s still alive. His brother dug with his hands to find him,” she told NPR. As diggers worked to dismantle the ruins of the building, rescuers found the lifeless body of Sedat in a blanket, and brought it home for his mother to say goodbye.
Syria’s largest earthquake and its aftermath: warnings for emergency management, and for reconstruction in the region of northwest Gaziantep, Turkey
“The impact of the earthquake in areas of Syria controlled by the government is significant, but the services are there and there is access to those people,” Ryan said. There have been 10 years of war in Syria. The health system is amazingly fragile. People have been through a lot.
Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad says that any aid it gets must go through Damascus. “The Syrian state is ready to allow aid to enter into all regions, provided that it does not reach terrorist armed groups,” he said.
More than 350,000 people have been temporarily displaced by this disaster, and more than 67,000 tents have been set up for them, according to the emergency management agency.
Researchers say people need to brace themselves for yet more quakes and aftershocks, as well as deteriorating weather. Ilan Kelman, who studies disasters and health at University College London, says that the chance for major earthquakes will keep happening for weeks and months.
Most of Turkey sits on the Anatolian plate between two major faults: the North Anatolian Fault and the East Anatolian Fault. The plate that carries Arabia is moving northward and colliding with the southern rim of the Eurasia, squeezing Turkey out to the west, according to David Rothery, a professor of geography at the Open University. He says Turkey is moving west by 2 centimetres per year. “Half the length of this fault is lit up now with earthquakes.”
Two weeks after a massive earthquake in both Turkey and Syria, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit the south of that country on Monday killing at least three people and injuring hundreds more.
In a study1 published last March in Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering, Arzu Arslan Kelam at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, and her colleagues suggested that the centre of the city of Gaziantep would experience medium-to-severe damage from a magnitude-6.5 earthquake. This is because most existing buildings are low-rise brick structures that are constructed very close to each other.
Many buildings need to be rebuilt, but there is a shortage of engineers in northwest Syria. Hayek said before the earthquake that there should be training for engineers on reconstruction according to appropriate safety standards. “Now it has become an necessity for us,” he said.
“The weather forecast for the region for tonight is dropping below freezing. It is likely that people trapped in the rubble could freeze to death if they are rescued. These are the dangers that keep on occurring, he adds.
Changing the face of the Syrian crisis: CNN’s Perspective on the region’s biggest stories in a decade after the 2011 September 11 earthquake
Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in today’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, CNN’s three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here.
The areas of Syria most impacted by the earthquake are controlled by the regime, followed by Turkish-Backed and US-backed opposition forces, Kurds and Sunni Islamist fighters. Idlib, one of Syria’s last opposition strongholds, is controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) organization, an armed Sunni Islamist group.
“Syrians have been let down by land, air and sea. There is a natural disaster, but they have experience bombing, missiles and demolitions, and had to survive on their own. “When you are failed by the institutions, again, that are meant to protect you, they are literally left on their own.”
Turkey is a NATO member whose international stature has only grown in recent years. Syria is ruled by a variety of groups. Its regime, internationally sidelined and heavily sanctioned due to its brutal suppression of an uprising there that started in 2011, counts Iran and Russia as its closest allies – both global pariahs.
The Syrian regime is shunned by most Western countries. But leader Bashar al-Assad has begun forging ties with former enemies as regional states welcome him back into the fold. Last year, the United Arab Emirates welcomed Assad in Abu Dhabi, and last month Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the pair may soon meet for peace talks.
“It’s still an active conflict zone, the Syrian crisis is far from over,” said Charles Lister, senior fellow and director of the Syria and Countering Terrorism & Extremism program at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. “The UN aid mission is a complicated set up.”
The UN was reliant on aid groups in the areas where millions were already suffering due to the effects of poverty and a cholera outbreak.
In northwest Syria, where the UN says more than 4.1 million people already depend on humanitarian aid, a political and military standoff between Assad and opposition forces is only expected to stifle international assistance.
Madevi Sun-Suon, a spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance, said that they were exploring all avenues to reach people in need. The road issue is a big challenge and we do have aid.
The Syrian regime was able to call for sanctions to be lifted. The UN envoy said planes wouldn’t land at Syrian airports because of American and European sanctions. “So even those countries who want to send humanitarian assistance, they cannot use the airplane cargo because of the sanctions,” he said in New York.
UN-appointed human rights expert called for the immediate lifting of sanctions against Syria in November, saying they were damaging to ordinary citizens there.
“It would be quite ironic, if not even counterproductive, for us to reach out to a government that has brutalized its people over the course of a dozen years now – gassing them, slaughtering them, being responsible for much of the suffering that they have endured,” US State Department spokesperson Ned Price told a media briefing on Monday.
The regime is making that argument because it is convenient to say that if sanctions were dropped, the situation would change.
Syria’s Left Behind Behind Earthquake Mimicry: Saudi Arabia, the Emirate, and the Middle East in the Light of the Saudi-Sweden Agreement
Iran has built an underground base which houses drones to protect military assets against air strikes by Israel, the army said in May.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said he was willing to restart talks on Sweden’s application to join NATO as soon as Turkey was, according to the report.
Background: Finland and Sweden sought NATO membership shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, and while most member states have ratified the applications, Turkey has yet to give its approval in what must be a unanimous process. Turkey last week said it looks positively on Finland’s application, but does not support Sweden’s, even though the two Nordic neighbors are seeking to join at the same time.
Why it matters: The three nations last year reached an agreement on a way forward, but Ankara suspended talks last month as tensions rose following protests in Stockholm, where a far-right politician burned a copy of the Quran. Turkey goes to elections in May.
It matters because it comes amid an apparent thaw in relations. Bahrain’s crown prince spoke with Qatar’s emir in a phone call last month, in a sign the two Gulf states could move towards repairing relations two years after the Arab boycott was lifted. The emir and king of both Russia and Saudi Arabia attended a small Arab summit in Abu Dhabi.
In January of 2021.Saudi Arabia, the U.S., the Middle East and Egypt ended a political and economic boycott of Qatar. There have been no bilateral talks to resolve the differences since then. Travel and trade links were restored all the way to Britain in the year 2021.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/middleeast/syria-left-behind-earthquake-mime-intl/index.html
An apology to Musk for breaking Twitter rules in the non-observation of the holy text and the suspension of the Twitter account Mucanak”
The account had more than 13 million followers before it was taken down.
One user addressed Musk, saying: “I don’t think it violated the Twitter rules because its tweets are quoted from the Holy Quran. We demand the lifting of the suspension of this account.”
Some users were not upset with the suspension. The account uses incomplete Quranic verse that is taken out of context and can affect the meaning of the text.
The account owner appears to run sister accounts in English, French and German, on which it posts translations of Quranic verses. There is a sister account that shows Quranic videos that wants the original account unblocked.
A United Nations aid convoy, made up of six trucks carrying shelter items and Non Food Items (NFI), crossed from Turkey into northwest Syria Thursday through the Bab Al Hawa crossing — the only humanitarian aid corridor between Turkey and rebel-held areas of northern Syria.
The only access point between the two countries was unavailable for three days, according to the administration that controls it.
The earthquake and humanitarian crisis: How many Syrians are still in need of help? A representative from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
Syrians don’t know where their next meal is coming from. When we say meal, it’s not about vegetables, not about meat… it’s about simple bread,” said Moutaz Adham, Oxfam’s country director for Syria.
A day earlier, another video went viral showing volunteer rescuers in a different part of the rebel-held territory saving a family — two girls, a boy and their father — from under the rubble some 40 hours after the quake.
Istanbul’s stock exchange closed until Feb. 15 after initial trading showed rapid declines, triggering a circuit breaker when declines reached 7%. The Turkish economy was already reeling from out-of-control inflation.
Since the earthquake last week, voice messages from people on the ground have flooded Al-Dahhan’s phone.
There are a number of rescues that the world knows about because of KaramKelih, a resident and photographer in the opposition controlled territory. The area has been home to some 4 million people since the Syrian civil war began. Poverty and bombs wreaked havoc in the area before the earthquake. 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. To help people who’ve been injured, and people with psychological stress. ,” he says. “This is the hard part.”
Prior to the earthquake, the number of Syrians in need of humanitarian assistance stood at 15.3 million, but will need to be revised, the UN Resident Comissioner for Syria said.
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.
Only five percent of the sites that are reported in north-west Syria have been searched and saved, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
In northwestern Syria, there’s little heavy machinery to lift rubble and people are digging with their own hands. There are fuel shortages in hospitals.
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.
Assad stood near a building that had been destroyed by the earthquake and said Western countries have no regard for the human condition. This comment is in line with statements heard from government officials and Syria’s state-run media, who have pinned the lack of humanitarian aid and hindered rescue equipment on US and EU sanctions.
SANA showed pictures of Assad and Asma visiting places that were affected by the earthquake and visiting survivors in a hospital.
The delivery of urgent supplies to quake-hit areas of northern Syria has been complicated by a long-running civil war between opposition forces and Assad’s government, who is accused of killing his own people. The Foreign Minister of Syria says that aid should be routed through Damascus.
Mohammed Juma was asleep when his family was crushed as he survived. In the cold nights, the 20-year-old and his friends burn their possessions in the debris to heat their homes.
By contrast, across the border in the northwest of Syria, residents of the town of Jinderis heard the screams of those trapped under the rubble but, without the right machinery and equipment, were powerless to save them.
On a rare visit to this rebel-held enclave of a country broken and isolated by more than a decade of civil war, NPR saw no international crews of rescuers; no trucks loaded with machinery or medical aid; no streams of ambulances to save the wounded. The border crossing was empty.
The Juma-Tabak tragedy unfolds: The last family member in Nurdagi, Turkey, is lifted from the rubble
Mohammed Juma said that his wife and their two children were alive after the home collapsed on top of them. The effort was futile as the Juma and his neighbors pulled at the shattered concrete for hours.
The Syrian civil defense teams don’t always have the machines to recover the dead. 850 dead were pulled from the rubble in Jinderis on Friday. A man who was killed by falling debris while laying his child in his bed remembers cuddling his boy and laying him in his bed. Tabakh’s wife died in the bed with him. Few friends were able to come due to the fact that they were too busy burying their own loved ones.
After years of war, they’ve been left with nothing. Tens of thousands now live with almost no access to basic services in makeshift tents set up in the olive groves where the mud clogs and weighs down the legs of children playing outside.
A one-hour drive away from one of the open border crossings, the town of Sawran is without running water. On one side of the main street is the destroyed home of the Turki family, where nine people, including five children died. A family of seven was killed on the road. After the Syrian government used a nerve agent against the population in Khan Sheikhoun, neighbors moved to Sawran.
Dramatic rescues were being broadcasted on Turkish television after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck central Kahramanmaras on Monday. First, 12-year-old Nehir Narli was saved by 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.
Elbistan’s earthquake killed a girl and her father injuring a child in Turkey and a daughter in Hatay
“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. Police announced that people should not cheer or clap, in order to avoid interfering with other rescue efforts nearby. She was covered in a thermal blanket on a stretcher. People 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 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 everything ended so well. The Rescuers in Hatay province in southern Turkey intubated a 13 year old girl after they reached her inside the collapsed building. But she died before the medical teams could amputate a limb and free her from the rubble, Hurriyet newspaper reported.
An Indian Army’s medical assistance team began to treat the injured in a temporary field hospital in Iskenderun, where a main hospital was demolished, as aid continued to arrive.
He said he was rescued from his collapsed apartment building in AnTAKya in the middle of the night after Monday’s 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 construction of a makeshift graveyard in the city of Antakya, Turkey, declared by its minister of religious affairs
″I buried (everyone that I lost), then I came here,” 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.
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 told motorists not to take pictures.
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 that as many as 2,000 people had been buried on Saturday.
“People who are coming out from the rubble now, it’s a miracle if they survive. Most of the people that come out now are dead, and they come here,” he said.
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. Another plane carrying an additional 30 tons of medical equipment will come in the next few days.
A Syrian refugee who is buried alive under the rubble hasn’t slept in a long time, but they are going to stay awake
The voice messages he’s received chronicling their pain make it impossible to sleep, he says. Haunted by their cries, he lies awake tormented by guilt. He worries that each moment he rests, thousands back home in Syria are still buried alive under rubble.
“It’s destroying me,” Al-Dahhan, 31, told CNN. I was getting voice messages from people telling me they are seeing people die and they are on the phone with me. I can’t stop hearing them.”
Al Ghraowi says that the nonprofit seeks to empower Syrian refugee youth and families nationally and internationally through access to innovative education, community-driven aid and skill development.
While on the ground his colleagues who survived have been in a race against datememe datememe, using the funds raised by Al-Dahhan to help rescue those still trapped under the rubble and deliver relief to shell-shocked survivors.
Al-Dahhan says he has not eaten correctly or been able to sleep for more than 10 minutes at a time since the earthquake.
He said that knowing what he is doing matters, because the more he can raise money, the more he will help. I need to keep going despite the fact that I am not doing enough. I feel guilty when I sleep. I need to be awake every second. I need to be working. I would like to receive more updates. I feel like I am doing everything here, but my mind and soul are not there.
Telling the story of a family lost to a fatherless earthquake: Do I matter as much or will I be forgotten again? Syria’s president Nour Al-Dahhan says the world has been quiet but not human
Another story is about a family that lost two sisters in the earthquake, leaving their children orphaned. According to Al-Dahhan, when their brother learned of their sisters deaths, he suffered a heart attack and died, leaving his children fatherless.
“My mind started racing and I immediately thought it was an Israeli airstrike, since we have had a few of those in Latakia over the past few years,” Alsamman, 27, told CNN. When I saw the reports of an earthquake late at night, I wish it had only been an airstrike.
He spent the entire day staring at images of death and destruction on his phone, without knowing if his friends and family were still alive.
“It felt like no one was there for them, no aid was coming through, the only organizations able to provide aid were the ones already there,” Al-Dahhan said.
As the clock ticked, the opportunity to rescue survivors decreased, igniting panicked efforts from Syrians in the US like Alsamman and Al-Dahhan to raise as much money as possible 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.
Despite the fact that the world has been quiet and no one has spoken about them, there are still organizations and people who are still fighting for them.
The northwest of the country, where the UN estimates to have killed 300,000 people in the country’s civil war, accounted for most of the casualties.
Giving immediate needs like food, shelter, and medicine, as well as providing mental-health care for Syrians, is critical according to Zahra.
She said that the feeling of being abandoned and forgotten is one of the major issues causing mental health issues for Syrians in the US.
“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 faceless picture that’s spread but not humanized?
White Helmets and the Relief of Syria After the April 11 Earthquake: How Do We Live and What We Can Do to Help?
The Palestine Red Crescent Society said Sunday that it was the first group to send a team to provide mental-health support to earthquake victims in Syria. 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.
“I built walls up years ago, because the war that happened really messed me up. I didn’t want to get hurt like that again, says Al-Dahhan I feel that the walls are crumbling after this earthquake. I can’t think of anything else, as I remember things I don’t want to remember.
Zahra and Alsamman both say they are struggling with survivor’s guilt, having a sinking feeling that no matter how much they help, it won’t be enough.
Zahra said that Syrians don’t have time to grieve because they’re trying to keep Syria in the news and make it a topic of conversation.
“We don’t have time to heal those wounds, we are literally shouting from the rooftops, please don’t get distracted, please share, please donate, please help.”
There are organizations on the ground who need help raising awareness, funds, and basic items. 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.”
Editor’s Note: Raed Al Saleh is head of The White Helmets, a group of nearly 3,000 volunteers working to save lives and strengthen communities in Syria. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion on CNN.
Our team of White Helmets volunteer rescue workers in northwest Syria have been working around the clock night and day, pulling survivors from the rubble and searching for signs of life — with virtually no help from the outside world.
The only organization in this area with the equipment and training to carry out heavy search and rescue is us. The volunteers have been doing the impossible, and I am humbled by their selflessness and dedication.
The United Nations needs to do better. If the system that was set up to save people’s lives in an emergency is broken when children are left to die under the rubble, something isn’t right.
UN asked the Security Council to authorize aid access through two more border crossed, an approach that wasted precious time, according to a report by Sky News. Legal analysts and scholars have argued against it, and humanitarian organizations say the need is too high for aid entry to be politicized.
Time and again Russia has used its veto at the Security Council to shut border crossings, reducing the routes for delivery of cross-border aid via Turkey to a single entry. The need for more cross-border routes was already clear when opening additional borders on a temporary basis.
The earthquake that killed thousands of people in Syria and Turkey last week created an incredible sound during the aftermath of a devastating tornado on May 9, 2019
The local communities that were impacted by the tornado lent their cars and heavy vehicles to help us dig and donate fuel so we could stay warm.
A valley 984 feet long is now divided by an olive grove cleaved during last week’s devastating earthquake in Turkey.
It is a reflection of the power of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that killed tens of thousands of people in Syria and Turkey last Monday.
Irfan Aksu, who lives in the neighborhood, told Turkish news agency Demioren News Agency that when the earthquake started last Monday it created “an incredible sound” where he lived.
He wanted experts to look for damage in the future. He said that this is not a small town because there are 1000 houses and 7,000 people living here. If it was closer, it would have happened in the middle of the town.
Last Monday’s earthquake was the strongest to hit anywhere in the world since an 8.1 magnitude quake struck 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.
“The people who are going to have the most effect on the rescue is going to be your neighbors. Because they’re the ones right there, right when it happens,” Forrest Lanning told NPR. He’s an earthquake and volcano response liaison with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a structural engineer.
Emergency response experts say training people to respond when official rescuers are not available is a must in order to save lives in the wake of a disaster.
The window of opportunity to save people under collapsed buildings will close as early as day four or 5, according to Lanning.
Even if a bystander can’t pull someone out of the rubble, they can still pinpoint for responders areas where people were located, said Natalie Simpson, the professor and chair of operations management and strategy at the University at Buffalo School of Management.
The procedure to get to people from each building takes a long time. And with the scene in Turkey “there’s thousands and thousands of these buildings,” he added.
The Case of Turkey and Syria: A Disaster-Transformed Landscape and It’s Not Too Early to Get It Out Of Here, But It Will Strengthen Community Emergency Response Teams
Knowing the importance of quick, local aid, the Community Emergency Response Team was developed in the U.S. FEMA has a program that trains volunteers for disaster response in all 50 states.
It teaches people how to respond to earthquakes, how to check on immobile neighbors and how to search collapsed buildings, according to Lanning.
The number of search and rescue teams on the scene and the injuries suffered by a trapped person are just some factors that contribute to how likely a trapped person is to survive. If a trapped person has no serious injuries, they can last up to a week under the collapsed building.
Simpson hopes that whenever a disaster strikes, there will be an immediate call up of rescue crews and military. She said that it isn’t always the case, and it wasn’t in Turkey or Syria.
The Turkish government has come under criticism for its response. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has admitted “the first day we had some discomforts,” but had insisted by the second and third days “the situation got under control.”
Simpson said that the biggest mistake emergency response teams make is failing to pick up on the fact that this is an emergency. The instinct is to wait to get more information.
She said that you are not in Kansas anymore with all of the emergencies. “These are not normal conditions and so one of the traps that we fall into is, ‘Oh God, what’s the best thing to do at this moment?’ Stop it with ‘best.’ It’s all good. Let’s get moving.”
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.
The Turkish military was not immediately sent to aid in the direct rescue efforts or to establish those important field hospitals according to an analysis published by the Middle East Institute.
“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 it will help people in the future, that’s what I think.
Lanning said how important it is for communities in earthquake prone areas to strengthen infrastructure because of this latest disaster in Turkey and Syria.
“A lot of the damage there is because of the type of construction and type of buildings,” which is mostly concrete, said Lanning, who has worked for 15 years in various earthquake-prone areas of the world.
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
How Did Mustafa Avci Get There? He Shared with Mehmet Ali Sakiroglu and Other Rescue Workers
Much of the work to analyze this latest disaster and what went wrong or right will come in the following months and years. But it’s incredibly valuable work, Lanning said.
How is my family? The man on the stretcher spoke calmly into his cell phone. His friend cried as he said, “everyone is well… they are all waiting for you… I am coming to you.”
This was the emotional exchange that followed the rescue of Mustafa Avci, 33, who was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building in Turkey’s southern Hatay province 261 hours after a powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the region on February 6.
Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca released a video on Friday that showed a phone call Avci made to his friend as the country continued to search for survivors of the devastating earthquake.
As the death toll in Turkey and Syria increased, the rescue of Avci late on Thursday night came.
Avci wears a neck brace as he asks “Did everyone escape okay?” in the video. If for a moment, 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.
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, “Brother! I do not feel my legs. Save me!”
Aydinli got tears in her eyes while talking about the boy’s rescue. “He is quite well and conscious. He will get better.
Hakan Yasinolu, 45, is still trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building in Hatay province
Efforts to retrieve survivors have been hampered by a cold winter spell and authorities are struggling with the logistical challenge of transporting aid into northwestern Syria.
Many lives have been saved, people were pulled from rubble by their friends, sons, daughters, mothers and fathers. Mike Ryan, the WHO’s emergencies director, said that frontline health workers have done amazing work in both countries.
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 shows him being carried on a stretcher.
The mother of two was trapped in a building for 258 hours and was freed late Thursday.
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.
“In Syria, rapid assessments by FAO of areas affected by the earthquakes suggest major disruption to crop and livestock production capacity, threatening immediate and longer-term food security,” the Rome-based agency said in a statement.
The holders of Turkish temporary protection cards will be able to go into Syria without having to obtain a travel permit from Turkey. Normally, Turkey would consider Syrians holding protected status who crossed into Syria without a permit to have relinquished their status as asylum-seekers. They would be banned from returning to Turkey for five years after surrendering 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.”
Donor Fatigue in a Syrian Earthquake: The U.N.’s Aid, Martin Griffiths, and Fuat Oktay
Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said the state was caring for 1,589 children who were separated from their families in the earthquake, including 247 who have not yet been identified.
The director of the private fundraising and partnerships at the UN says Syria has lost the attention of the world. The World Government Summit is an annual forum of political and thought leaders.
Donor support is vital for the protection of children and people affected by the earthquakes in Haiti and other parts of the world.
She says that it is essential for their support to reach her so that they can bring the aid where it is needed most.
While attention is still on the earthquake, aid groups are attempting to raise more money for the Syrians by exploiting the current swell of support.
He too spoke with NPR at the World Government Summit in Dubai. The WHO is delivering tons of medical supplies to Syria, and he’s just returned from there.
The U.N.’s humanitarian relief coordinator, Martin Griffiths, visited areas affected by the earthquakes and described situations of “unspeakable heartache.”
A Syrian resident of Turkey, with millions of followers on social media, shared his tear-filled video in Arabic detailing psychological trauma among Syrian survivors.
A Syrian man abruptly left a bus after he claimed he had heard his two children calling for him from the rubble of his home, said Abu Lebda.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1157783760/turkey-syria-earthquake-aid-donor-fatigue
Emergency medical personnel have been overwhelmed by the magnitude of the 2004 July 8 earthquake in Hatay: a warning to the public from the evacuation of buildings
The U.N. refugee agency has a $4.7 billion budget shortfall and closed last year with only half of its funding needs met. The agency helps millions of Syrians and says it has received just 15% of it’s funding requirements for the next five years.
Turkish Interior Minister Sleyman Soylu said Monday that the epicenter was in theDefne district.
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.
They are telling the public to stay away from buildings. Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay earlier Monday asked the public “not to enter the damaged buildings, especially to take their belongings.”
Zahir, who lives in a town that is in Turkey’s Hatay province, says they went back to their house after another shock.
Turkey’s disaster management authority said on Sunday that it ended the search and rescue operations after two weeks, as experts say there is very little chance of survivors emerging from the rubble.
Efforts remain in Kahramanmara and Hatay. On Saturday, a couple and their 12-year-old child were rescued in Hatay, 296 hours after the earthquake, state news agency Anadolu reported.
With only 64 X-ray and 73 kidney dialysis machines, 7 CT scanners and one MRI, doctors in northwest Syria are racing against the clock to treat 8,500 injuries.
There are only three temporary crossing points on the border with Turkey that aid agencies can use to get supplies and expertise to earthquake-hit areas.
Hospitals in this region have been overwhelmed by the need to accommodate thousands of people with injuries who cannot fit in standard hospital spaces.
Doctors say that they urgently need more dialysis machines and orthopaedic-surgery equipment, along with painkillers and antibiotics. Supplies will run out after the earthquake since they weren’t plentiful before.
The people are using any existing resources, including basic ambulances, Ekzayez says. Haboush, who worked at the maternity hospital in Idleb when the first earthquake hit, said medical staff have been working non-stop. The hospital sits on the fifth and sixth floors. “We had to evacuate the incubators and move all the babies to the ground floor,” Haboush recalls.
Assessing earthquake-damaged buildings by house-to-house tapping with household tools: The Syrian diaspora vs. the society in northwest Syria
According to three doctors who Nature spoke to in northwest Syria, the most common injuries are limb fractures, trauma injuries, crush injuries including ‘crush syndrome’ (damages that result in organ dysfunction including kidney failure) and bleeding.
People with crush syndrome need intensive care and dialysis, says cardiologist Jawad Abu Hatab, who is dean of medicine at Free Aleppo University in northwest Syria. The region has a low number of machines for the treatment of renal arteriosclerosis.
Volunteer engineers are going house-to-house checking which of some 8,500 earthquake-damaged buildings are safe enough for people to return to. But lacking in the necessary tools and safety equipment, they are resorting to tapping walls with household implements such as simple hammers and making decisions using the naked eye.
It is painstaking work. According to the Association of Free Syrian Engineers, a voluntary group based in A’zaz, near Srinagar, that is coordinating the effort, over two thousand of the damaged buildings have been assessed.
Virtual assessments in places inaccessible to local engineers are being helped by experts from the Syrian diaspora. Residents of damaged buildings are taking photos and videos of the interiors and sending them to members of the Syrian Engineers Association in Qatar, based in Doha.
Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00547-7
The aftermath of Assad’s regime: international support in the reconstruction of Latakia and its alawite communities. Photographs from transport convoys
Regardless of the material available, buildings in danger of collapsing are reinforced with whatever is available. An engineer with the volunteers association said carbon-fibre-reinforced polymers would be better for reinforcing earthquakes. Instead, they are using brittle industrial iron. “We are in an emergency situation, so we must respond quickly using the resources that we have,” Hayek says.
Ali Hallak, a computer engineer and member of the engineers association in northwest Syria, said that the next step is to analyse reports and produce statistical studies, which will be important in the reconstruction phase.
There are projects looking at the situation. One is the UK-funded Research for Health Systems Strengthening in Syria, which is investigating how health care is being affected by war, and determining what more-sustainable models of governance and financing could look like, says co-investigator Abdulkarim Ekzayez, an epidemiologist at King’s College London.
Researchers can convince the WHO to focus on the region’s health needs. The agency is trusted and, through director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, it could do more to use that status to urge all the power brokers on the ground to allow it to work with other experts to deliver both immediate and longer-term help, including much-needed assistance to rebuild homes and health systems.
This tragedy has opened a rare window to provide more international support for people who have been neglected for much too long. Researchers can work to keep that window open.
The President’s government has lost some territory in the north to various groups, but still controls most of the rest of the country. Rights groups cite extensive evidence of torture, imprisonment, disappearances as well as the bombing of civilian areas by the government and its Russian allies to hold onto power.
The region of Latakia was spared from much of the fighting. This is the president’s ancestral homeland and a regime stronghold. Members of the minority Alawite community, from which Assad hails, retain key posts throughout this region that is home to Christians and Sunni Muslims, as well.
As a result of the photos taken, the millions of people in this area can see life in a more intimate way. Some of these images were taken from a moving car as the Emirates Red Crescent convoy traveled through towns and villages, accompanied by Syrian security forces. The Syrians who were interviewed say they are exhausted by war and have been traumatized by the earthquakes.
Most of the day, the coastal town is without electricity and impoverished, and it was once home to tourists who came to see the Mediterranean coast. It is isolated from much of the world as a result of U.S. sanctions.
The president’s image looms large over dilapidated buildings and shuttered storefronts throughout Jableh. His image, washed out and faded on posters and army checkpoints, harken to an era of stability that too has faded from view.
