Rescue operations halted in Turkey and Syria after the devastating earthquake

ADIYAMAN, Turkey (AP) — Thousands of people displaced by the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria a week ago swarmed into crowded tents or lined the streets for hot meals Monday, while a likely desperate search for anyone still lingered. Alive has entered its final hours. .

A crew member pulled a 4-year-old girl from the rubble in the stricken Adiyaman district, 177 hours after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck. Thousands of domestic and foreign teams, including Turkish coal miners and experts with the help of sniffer dogs and thermal cameras, scour pulverized apartment buildings for signs of life.

While stories of near-miraculous rescues have flooded the airwaves in recent days — many of them broadcast live on Turkish television and broadcast around the world — tens of thousands more have been found dead over the same period. Experts say that given temperatures that have dropped to -6 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) – and the complete collapse of many buildings – the window for rescue operations is almost closed.

Read more: How to help victims of the 7.8 earthquake in Turkey and Syria

The earthquake and its aftershocks, including the main one nine hours after the first quake, struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on February 6, killing more than 35,000 people and reducing entire swathes of towns and cities of millions to shards of concrete and twisted metal. .

The damage included heritage sites in places like Antakya, an important ancient port and ancient center of Christianity historically known as Antakya. Greek Orthodox churches in the area have initiated philanthropic campaigns to assist with relief efforts and to raise money for the eventual rebuilding or repair of the churches.

100 kilometers (62 miles) from the epicenter, there were almost no homes left in Polat village, where residents salvaged refrigerators, washing machines and other goods from destroyed homes.

Survivor Zahra Korkava said that not enough tents reached the homeless, forcing families to share the tents that were available.

“We sleep in the mud, all together with two, three or four families,” said Kurokava.

On Monday, Turkish authorities said more than 150,000 survivors had been transferred to shelters outside the affected provinces. In the city of Adiyaman, Musa Bozkurt waited for a car that would take him and others to western Turkey.

“We’ll go far, but we have no idea what’s going to happen when we get there,” said the 25-year-old. “We have no goal. Even if there is (a plan), what is the use of it after this hour? I no longer have my father or uncle. What have I left?”

But Fuat Ekinci, a 55-year-old farmer, was reluctant to leave his home for western Turkey despite the devastation, saying he did not have the means to live elsewhere and had fields that needed tending to.

Beware: Deadly earthquake in Turkey and Syria leaves millions homeless

He said: “Those who have the means leave, but we are poor.” The government says go and live there for a month or two. How do I leave my house? My field is here, this is my home, how can I leave it behind? “

Volunteers from all over Turkey mobilized to help the millions of survivors, including a group of volunteer chefs and restaurateurs who served traditional foods like bean, rice and lentil soup to survivors who lined the streets of downtown Adiyaman.

Other volunteers continued the rescue effort. After rescuers pulled the 4-year-old away, a relative told HaberTurk TV that more loved ones were inside the building.

As the scale of the disaster became apparent, grief and disbelief turned to anger at the sense of an ineffective response to the historic catastrophe. That anger could be a political problem for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who faces a tough fight for re-election in May.

Meanwhile, rescue workers, including coal miners who secured rescue tunnels with wooden struts, found a woman alive on Monday in the wreckage of a five-storey building in Turkey’s Gaziantep province.

The Syrian authorities said that the new baby whose mother gave birth while she was trapped under the rubble of her home is in good condition. Baby Aya was found hours after the earthquake, still connected by umbilical cord to her mother, who had died. She is breastfed by the wife of the director of the hospital in which she is being treated.

Such tales gave much hope, but Eduardo Reynoso Angulo, a professor at the Institute of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the likelihood of finding living people was “very slim right now.”

David Alexander, professor of emergency planning and management at University College London, agrees. But, he added, the odds were not good at first.

Many of the buildings were so poorly built that they had collapsed into very small pieces, Alexander said, leaving very few large enough to survive.

“If a building of some kind passes by, we generally find open spaces in the rubble heap where we can dig tunnels,” Alexander said. “Looking at some of these images from Turkey and Syria, there are no spaces.”

Winter conditions reduce their window of survival. The body shivers in the cold to keep warm — but that burns a lot of calories, which means people deprived of food will die more quickly, said Dr. Stephanie LaRue, a professor of emergency medicine at Virginia Tech.

Many in Turkey blame faulty construction for the massive destruction, and authorities have begun targeting contractors allegedly linked to the collapsed buildings. Turkey has introduced building codes that meet earthquake engineering standards, but experts say https://apnews.com/article/politics-2023-turkey-syria-earthquake-government-istanbul-fbd6af578a6056569879b5ef6c55d322.

Read more: After earthquake, residents of war-torn Syria struggle to get help and rebuild

The death toll from the earthquake in Turkey has exceeded 31,000. The death toll in Syria, which is split between rebel-held and government-held areas, has risen to more than 3,500, though deaths reported by the government have not been updated for days.

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths said while visiting the Turkish-Syrian border on Sunday that the international community had failed to provide assistance.

Griffiths said the Syrians “feel right to be abandoned.” He added, “My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as quickly as possible.”

In the Syrian capital, Damascus, the UN special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, told reporters that “problems” with aid flows into rebel-held northwest Syria are “now being rectified.”

Meanwhile, the Kurdish-led administration in northeastern Syria said 53 trucks carrying aid crossed from Kurdish territory into quake-affected areas held by Turkish-backed opposition fighters in northwest Syria who had previously prevented convoys from crossing. Turkish authorities consider the SDF a terrorist group, along with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a Kurdish separatist group based in Turkey.

Fraser reports from Ankara, Turkey, and El Deeb from Adana, Turkey. Tania Titova in Malatya, Turkey, and Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia, contributed.

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