Antakya: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces hit by two earthquakes that killed more than 8,000 people and left a trail of destruction in southern Turkey and a wide swath of neighboring Syria.
A day after the earthquake struck, rescue workers working in harsh conditions struggled to pull people out from the rubble of collapsed buildings.
As the scale of the disaster became more apparent, the death toll seemed likely to rise considerably. A UN official said thousands of children are feared dead.
And residents of several devastated Turkish cities expressed anger and frustration at what they said was a slow and inadequate response by authorities to Turkey’s deadliest earthquake since 1999.
“There is not a single person here. We are under the snow, without a house, without anything,” said Murat Alenik, whose house collapsed in Malatya and whose relatives are missing. “What shall I do, where shall I go?”
Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake, which was followed a few hours later by an earthquake nearly as powerful, toppled thousands of buildings, including hospitals, schools and apartment blocks.
Tens of thousands of people were injured or displaced in cities in Turkey and northern Syria.
The winter weather has hampered rescue and relief efforts and made the plight of the displaced more miserable. Some areas were without fuel and electricity.
Aid officials expressed particular concern over the situation in Syria, which is already suffering from a humanitarian crisis after nearly 12 years of civil war.
Erdogan on Tuesday declared 10 affected provinces of Turkey as disaster zones and imposed a state of emergency there for three months. It would allow the government to bypass parliament in making new laws and limit or suspend rights and freedoms.
Erdogan, who faces national elections in three months’ time, said the government would open hotels in the tourist hub of Antalya to temporarily house earthquake victims.
Vice President Fuat Okte said Turkey’s death toll rose to 5,894. More than 34,000 were injured. At least 1,932 people were killed, according to a rescue service in Syria’s government- and rebel-held northwest.
‘Every Minute, Every Hour’
Turkish officials say about 13.5 million people have been affected in an area stretching about 450 kilometers (280 miles) from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east and 300 kilometers from Malatya in the north to Hatay in the south.
Syrian officials reported casualties as far south as Hama, about 250 kilometers (155 miles) from the epicenter.
“It is now a race against time,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva. “Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors diminish.”
Across the region, rescuers toiled day and night as people clung to piles of rubble in the hope that friends, relatives and neighbors might be found alive.
In Antakya, the capital of Hatay Province, which borders Syria, aid teams were thin on the ground and residents picked up the rubble themselves. People begged for helmets, hammers, iron bars and ropes.
A woman, 54 years old and identified as Gulmasar, was pulled alive from the eight-storey building 32 hours after the earthquake.
Another woman then shouted at rescue workers: “My dad was right behind the room she was in. Please save him.”
The workers explained that they could not reach the room from the front and needed an excavator to remove the wall first.
Turkish officials say more than 12,000 search and rescue personnel are working in the affected areas along with 9,000 soldiers. About 70 countries and personnel are sending supplies and aid.
But the sheer scale of the devastation is terrifying.
“The area is huge. I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Johannes Gust, from Germany’s fire and rescue service, as he loaded supplies onto a truck at Turkey’s Adana airport.
Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) said the quake destroyed 5,775 buildings and injured 20,426 people.
UNICEF spokesman James Elder in Geneva said: “An earthquake could kill thousands of children.”
‘Horrible Scene’
Elder said Syrian refugees in northwest Syria and Turkey were among the worst affected.
In the Syrian city of Hama, Abdullah al-Dahan said several families were holding funerals on Tuesday.
“It’s a horrible scene in every way,” Dahan said by phone. “Despite everything that has happened to us, I have never seen anything like this in my entire life.”
Mosques opened their doors to families whose homes were damaged.
At least 812 people were killed and 1,449 wounded in the government-held provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, Idlib and Tartus, JEE News said.
The White Helmets Rescue Team said at least 900 people were killed and 2,300 wounded in Syria’s opposition-held northwest, with the number expected to “rise dramatically”.
“Many efforts are being made by our teams, but they are unable to respond to the devastation and large number of collapsed buildings,” said the group’s head, Raad al-Saleh.
He said time was running out to save hundreds of families trapped under the rubble of buildings and urgent help from international groups was needed.
A UN human rights official in Syria said fuel shortages and harsh weather were creating obstacles.
“Infrastructure has been damaged, the roads that we used for humanitarian work have been damaged,” UN Resident Coordinator Al-Mustafa Benalmaleh told JEE News from Damascus.
‘Where is the state?’
At the Turkish port of Iskandar, hundreds of shipping containers caught fire, shutting down operations and forcing cargo liners to divert ships to other ports. The Maritime Authority says the fire is the result of earthquake damage.
In Turkey’s Malatya, where snow is still on the ground, people expressed their frustration at what they said was a lack of help in the search for missing people.
Without any specialized equipment or gloves, they tried to pick up the rubble of houses that had collapsed due to the force of the earthquake.
“My in-laws’ grandchildren. We’ve been here for two days. We’re devastated,” said Sabiha Alink.
“Where is the state? We are begging them, let us do it, we can save them, we can do it with our resources.”
