Earthquake Disaster: Toll Mounts to 17,500 as Freezing Temperature Hindered Rescue Operations

Manas Dasgupta

NEW DELHI, Feb 9: Amidst fading hope of finding new survivors with the critical period of 72 hours already over, the rescue teams continued their searches in freezing temperature to look for life in the rubbles created by one of the deadliest earthquakes that has already accounted for 17,500 deaths in Turkey and Syria.

Bitter cold has hampered the four-day search of thousands of flattened buildings and the 72-hour mark that experts consider the most likely period to save lives has passed though surviving at least up to seven days in the rubbles is not ruled out.

Temperatures in the Turkish city of Gaziantep plunged to minus five degrees Celsius early Thursday, but thousands of families spent the night in cars and makeshift tents — too scared or banned from returning to their homes. Parents walked the streets of the city — close to the epicentre of Monday’s earthquake — carrying their children in blankets because it was warmer than sitting in a tent.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, after mounting criticism online over the lukewarm initial disaster response, visited one of the hardest-hit spots, Kahramanmaras, and acknowledged problems. “Of course, there are shortcomings. The conditions are clear to see. It’s not possible to be ready for a disaster like this,” he said Wednesday. “We will not leave any of our citizens uncared for,” he added. He also hit back at critics, saying “dishonorable people” were spreading “lies and slander” about the government’s actions.

The rescue teams in Turkey and Syria searched for signs of life in the rubble. Teams from more than two dozen countries have joined tens of thousands of local emergency personnel in the effort. But the scale of destruction from the quake and its powerful aftershocks was so immense and spread over such a wide area that many people were still awaiting help.

Officials and medics said 14,351 people had died in Turkey and 3,162 in Syria from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 17,513. Experts fear the number will continue to rise sharply. “We are now racing against the clock to save lives together,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said on Twitter. Despite the dimming hopes for rescues, thousands of local and foreign searchers have not given up in the hunt for more survivors.

Turkish officials say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450 km from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east. In Syria, people were killed as far south as Hama, 250 km from the epicentre.

The first United Nations convoy carrying emergency aid to a rebel-held area of Syria crossed from Turkey. The trucks, with materials from jerrycans to blankets, went via the Bab Al Hawa crossing to Idlib city in an area of northwest Syria where 4 million people, many uprooted by civil war, had relied on aid even before Monday’s quake.

India’s aids as part of the ‘Operation Dost’ continued to reach the quake-stricken areas on Thursday. The sixth plane carrying rescue personnel, essentials and medical equipment for earthquake relief efforts reached Turkey on Thursday. The sixth flight carried more rescue teams, dog squads, and essential medicines for the quake-hit country.

Turkey is grappling with one of the biggest challenges from the earthquake that flattened a swathe of its towns and cities: how to shelter hundreds of thousands of people left homeless in the middle of winter. Banks of tents are being erected in stadiums and shattered city centres, and Mediterranean and Aegean beach resorts outside the quake zone that use the winter months to prepare for summer tourism are opening up hotel rooms for evacuees.

The country’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority has established meeting points for homeless people wanting to be evacuated from the quake zone. It calculates that more than 28,000 people have been brought out so far, with nearly 5,000 leaving by road and more than 23,000 by plane.

Relatives were left scouring body bags laid out in a hospital car park in Turkey’s southern city of Antakya to search for missing relatives, an indication of the scale of the tragedy. “We found my aunt, but not my uncle,” said Rania Zaboubi, a Syrian refugee who lost eight members of her family, as other survivors sought loved ones’ bodies among the corpses.

The 7.8-magnitude quake struck as people slept early Monday in a region where many people had already suffered loss and displacement due to Syria’s civil war.

An official at the Bab al-Hawa border crossing said an aid convoy reached rebel-held north-western Syria Thursday, the first since the earthquake that has left survivors sleeping outdoors due to aftershock risks. A decade of civil war and Syrian-Russian aerial bombardment had already destroyed hospitals, collapsed the economy and prompted electricity, fuel and water shortages. Gyms, mosques, schools and some stores have opened up at night. But beds are still at a premium and thousands spend the nights in cars with engines running to provide heat.

Dozens of nations, including China and the United States have pledged to help, and search teams as well as relief supplies have already arrived. In Brussels, the EU is planning a donor conference in March to mobilise international aid for Syria and Turkey.

The European Union said the conference would be held in coordination with Turkish authorities “to mobilise funds from the international community in support for the people” of both countries.

The bloc was swift to dispatch rescue teams to Turkey after the massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country on Monday close to the border with Syria. But it initially offered only minimal assistance to Syria through existing humanitarian programmes because of EU sanctions imposed since 2011 on the government of President Bashar al-Assad in response to his brutal crackdown on protesters, which spiralled into a civil war. On Wednesday, Damascus made an official plea to the EU for help, the bloc’s commissioner for crisis management said.

For years, the people of Aleppo in Syria bore the brunt of bombardment and fighting when their city, once Syria’s largest and most cosmopolitan, was among the civil war’s fiercest battle zones. Even that didn’t prepare them for the new devastation and terror wreaked by this week’s earthquake. The natural disaster piled on many human-made ones, multiplying the suffering in Aleppo and Syria more broadly.

Fighting largely halted in Aleppo in 2016, but only a small number of the numerous damaged and destroyed buildings had been rebuilt. The population has also more recently struggled with Syria’s economic downslide, which has sent food prices soaring and residents thrown into poverty. The shock of the quake is all too much.

The Turkey-Syria border is one of the world’s most active earthquake zones. Monday’s quake was the largest Turkey has seen since 1939, when 33,000 people died in the eastern Erzincan province. In 1999, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake killed more than 17,000.