Although the quakes were powerful, experts say properly constructed buildings should have been able to stay standing.
"The
maximum intensity for this earthquake was violent but not necessarily
enough to bring well constructed buildings down," says Prof David
Alexander, an expert in emergency planning and management at University
College London.
"In
most places the level of shaking was less than the maximum, so we can
conclude out of the thousands of buildings that collapsed, almost all of
them don't stand up to any reasonably expected earthquake construction
code."
So many lives lost because of one word: cheap.
I mentioned this earlier, I worked over in the Middle East and saw how they construct buildings. They have a building style that didn't fair well in bombs and now in earthquakes.
Cheap is a good word for it. lazy perhaps too. Regulations are very easy to overlook there still.
Well hell, isn't there a building in San Fran that cheaped out and didn't put their foundation to bedrock and it has a lean?
Next earthquake that one is going over unfortunately.
I saw a building like that in Pisa. It was crazy.
Yeah, that one is crazy and only a fraction of the size of that tower in SF. Look it up. I can't believe they allow that thing to stand and be occupied.
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,769
Although the quakes were powerful, experts say properly constructed buildings should have been able to stay standing.
"The
maximum intensity for this earthquake was violent but not necessarily
enough to bring well constructed buildings down," says Prof David
Alexander, an expert in emergency planning and management at University
College London.
"In
most places the level of shaking was less than the maximum, so we can
conclude out of the thousands of buildings that collapsed, almost all of
them don't stand up to any reasonably expected earthquake construction
code."
So many lives lost because of one word: cheap.
I mentioned this earlier, I worked over in the Middle East and saw how they construct buildings. They have a building style that didn't fair well in bombs and now in earthquakes.
Cheap is a good word for it. lazy perhaps too. Regulations are very easy to overlook there still.
Well hell, isn't there a building in San Fran that cheaped out and didn't put their foundation to bedrock and it has a lean?
Next earthquake that one is going over unfortunately.
I saw a building like that in Pisa. It was crazy.
Yeah, that one is crazy and only a fraction of the size of that tower in SF. Look it up. I can't believe they allow that thing to stand and be occupied.
It's unnerving to be in that part of the city any more. Pretty much any time we head down there, we go to Golden Gate Park or visit friends in much safer Noe Valley.
Another reason to avoid downtown is the somewhat new Salesforce phallus. Imagine this sucker going down in an earthquake (and notice in the background other high rise buildings going up on landfill):
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Not sure this would make a difference but it seems they tried.
Salesforce Tower is located near San Francisco’s historic coastline, which is prone to soil instability during tremors.
To accommodate for this structural hazard, the building’s construction is designed to resist the region’s biggest earthquakes. Its foundation consists of 42 piles sunk roughly 91 meters to bedrock and a 4.3-meter-thick foundation mat. The 61st floor functions as a viewing platform and communal lounge area for the Salesforce workers and visitors. The corporation offered advanced signup for open visits of the observation deck once a month. Above the 61st story of the skyscraper, it has been described as “mainly decorative.”
Rescuers rejoice as more quake survivors emerge from rubble
By JUSTIN SPIKE, GHAITH ALSAYED and ZEYNEP BILGINSOY
Today
ISKENDERUN, Turkey (AP) — Six relatives huddled in a small air pocket, day after day. A desperate teenager grew so thirsty that he drank his own urine. Two frightened sisters were comforted by a pop song as they waited for rescuers to free them.
These earthquake survivors were among more than a dozen people pulled out of the rubble alive Friday after spending over four days trapped in frigid darkness following the disaster that struck Turkey and Syria.
The unlikely rescues, coming so long after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake brought down thousands of buildings, offered fleeting moments of joy amid a catastrophe that has killed nearly 24,000 people, injured at least 80,000 others and left millions homeless.
In the Mediterranean coastal city of Iskenderun, a crowd chanted “God is great!” as Haci Murat Kilinc and his wife, Raziye, were carried on stretchers to a waiting ambulance.
“You’ve been working so many hours, God bless you!” a relative of the couple told one of their saviors.
One rescue worker said that Kilinc had been joking with crew members while still trapped beneath the rubble, trying to boost their morale.
Two hours earlier in Kahramanmaras, the city closest to the epicenter, rescuers embraced and chanted their thanks to God after pulling a man from his collapsed home.
In Adiyaman, a hard-hit city of more than a quarter-million people, rescuers and onlookers suppressed their joy so as not to frighten 4-year-old Yagiz Komsu as he emerged from the debris, according the HaberTurk television, which broadcast the rescue live.
To distract him, he was given a jelly bean. Teams later rescued his 27-year-old mother, Ayfer Komsu, who had a broken rib.
But the flurry of dramatic rescues could not obscure the devastation spread across a sprawling border region that is home to more than 13.5 million people. Entire neighborhoods of high-rises have been reduced to rubble, and the quake has already killed more people than Japan’s Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, with many more bodies yet to be recovered and counted.
Relatives wept and chanted as rescuers pulled 17-year-old Adnan Muhammed Korkut from a basement in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the quake’s epicenter. He had been trapped for 94 hours, forced to drink his own urine to survive.
“Thank God you arrived,” he said, embracing his mother and others who leaned down to kiss and hug him as he was being loaded into an ambulance.
For one of the rescuers, identified only as Yasemin, Adnan’s survival hit home hard.
“I have a son just like you,” she told him after giving him a warm hug. “I swear to you, I have not slept for four days. … I was trying to get you out.”
Elsewhere, HaberTurk television said rescuers had identified nine people trapped inside the remains of a high-rise apartment block in Iskenderun and pulled out six of them, including a woman who waved at onlookers as she was being carried away on a stretcher. The crowd shouted “God is great!” after she was brought out.
The building was only 600 feet (200 meters) from the Mediterranean Sea and narrowly avoided being flooded when the massive earthquake sent water surging into the city center.
Video of another rescue effort in Kahramanmaras showed an emergency worker playing a pop song on his smartphone to distract the two teenage sisters as they waited to be freed.
There were still more stories: A German team said it worked for more than 50 hours to free a woman from a collapsed house in Kirikhan. And a trapped woman could be heard speaking to a team trying to dig her out in video broadcast by HaberTurk television. She told her would-be rescuers that she had given up hope of being found — and prayed to be put to sleep because she was so cold. The station did not say where the operation was taking place.
Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the odds of finding more survivors were quickly waning.
Death loomed everywhere: Morgues and cemeteries were overwhelmed, and bodies wrapped in blankets, rugs and tarps lay in the streets of some cities.
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 was still struggling to reach many people in need.
The disaster compounded suffering in a region beset by Syria's 12-year civil war, which has displaced millions of people within the country and left them dependent on aid. The fighting sent millions more to seek refuge in Turkey.
The conflict has isolated many areas of Syria and complicated efforts to get aid in. The United Nations said the first earthquake-related aid convoy crossed from Turkey into northwestern Syria on Friday — a day after an aid shipment planned before the disaster arrived.
The U.N. refugee agency estimated that as many as 5.3 million people have been left homeless in Syria. Sivanka Dhanapala, the country representative in Syria for UNHCR, told reporters Friday that the agency is focusing on providing tents, plastic sheeting, thermal blankets, sleeping mats and winter clothing.
Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife, Asmaa, visited survivors at the Aleppo University Hospital, according to Syrian state media. It was the leader's first public appearance in an affected area of the country since the disaster. He then visited rescuers in one of the city's hardest-hit areas.
The Syrian government also announced that it will allow aid to reach all parts of the country, including areas held by insurgent groups in the northwest.
Also Friday, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, declared a cease-fire in its separatist insurgency in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, including some areas affected by the quake.
Turkey’s disaster-management agency said more than 20,200 people had been confirmed killed in the disaster so far in Turkey, with more than 80,000 injured.
More than 3,500 have been confirmed killed in Syria, bringing the total number of dead to nearly 24,000.
Some 12,000 buildings in Turkey have either collapsed or sustained serious damage, according to Turkey’s minister of environment and urban planning, Murat Kurum. Turkey's vice president, Fuat Oktay, said more than 1 million people were being housed in temporary shelters.
Alsayed reported from Bab al-Hawa, Syria. Bilginsoy reported from Istanbul. Associated Press journalists Robert Badendieck in Istanbul; Mehmet Guzel in Antakya, Turkey; Emrah Gurel and Yakup Paksoy in Adiyaman, Turkey; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Bassem Mroue and Abby Sewell in Beirut; Salar Salim in Erbil, Iraq; Hogir al-Abdo in Manbij, Syria; and David Rising in Bangkok contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,769
Not sure this would make a difference but it seems they tried.
Salesforce Tower is located near San Francisco’s historic coastline, which is prone to soil instability during tremors.
To accommodate for this structural hazard, the building’s construction is designed to resist the region’s biggest earthquakes. Its foundation consists of 42 piles sunk roughly 91 meters to bedrock and a 4.3-meter-thick foundation mat. The 61st floor functions as a viewing platform and communal lounge area for the Salesforce workers and visitors. The corporation offered advanced signup for open visits of the observation deck once a month. Above the 61st story of the skyscraper, it has been described as “mainly decorative.”
To be honest, I wish thee damn thing were actually a rocket and would blast off and keep going. To my eyes, it ruined the skyline of my favorite city. But I guess that's "progress".
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,769
The earthquake
that struck southeastern Turkey this week is now one of the deadliest
disasters in decades. More than 20,000 people have been killed in Turkey
and Syria, with the toll expected to rise as wintry conditions and time
foreclose the chance to pull survivors from the rubble.
In Turkey alone, an estimated 16,000 have been killed. More than 6,400 buildings have collapsed in an area that was prone to earthquakes and whose recent buildings were, if not earthquake-proofed, supposed to be better able to withstand the next big tremor.
Which means now, as the emergency unfolds into a sustained tragedy, it
looks as if Turkey was unprepared for a disaster that was a matter of
when, not if.
In Turkey, this is raising questions about who is
responsible — and right now, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his
ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) are facing scrutiny from
survivors and opposition politicians for potentially making Turkey more
vulnerable to the quake, and for the government response in the
aftermath.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Just got back from my trip to Chile a country prone to earthquakes I was 5 when this earthquake hit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Valpara%C3%ADso_earthquake_and_the_El_Cobre_dam_failures and was 1 month away from being born in 1960 when a 9.5 hit Chile I have to ask my father how they survived it, my mother was visiting in 1985 the day after she left to come back to USA the country got hit with a big earthquake! I still remember the streets moving as if they were sitting on water when I was 5
jesus greets me looks just like me ....
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,769
Just got back from my trip to Chile a country prone to earthquakes I was 5 when this earthquake hit https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Valpara%C3%ADso_earthquake_and_the_El_Cobre_dam_failures and was 1 month away from being born in 1960 when a 9.5 hit Chile I have to ask my father how they survived it, my mother was visiting in 1985 the day after she left to come back to USA the country got hit with a big earthquake! I still remember the streets moving as if they were sitting on water when I was 5
Despite being born in and living in California most of my life, I don't worry much about earthquakes. But 9.5! Now that would NOT be something I would want to experience!
Glad you survived those quakes in Chile! The world is a better place with you in it.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,932
Survivors still being found as quake death toll tops 28,000
By JUSTIN SPIKE, ABDELRAHMAN SHAHEEN and ZEYNEP BILGINSOY
Today
LATAKIA, Syria (AP) — Ibrahim Zakaria lost track of time drifting into and out of consciousness while trapped for nearly five days in the rubble of his home following the massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria this week.
The 23-year-old cellphone shop worker from the Syrian town of Jableh survived on dirty drips of water and eventually lost hope that he’d be saved.
“I said I am dead and it will be impossible for me to live again,” Zakaria, who was rescued Friday night, told The Associated Press on Saturday from his bed at a hospital in the coastal city of Latakia where his 60-year-old mother, Duha Nurallah, was also recovering.
Five days after two powerful earthquakes hours apart caused thousands of buildings to collapse, killing more than 28,000 people and leaving millions homeless, rescuers were still pulling unlikely survivors from the ruins — one of them just 7 months old.
Although each rescue elicited hugs and shouts of “Allahu akbar!” — “God is great!” — from the weary men and women working tirelessly in the freezing temperatures to save lives, they were the exception in a region blanketed by grief, desperation and mounting frustration.
More than a dozen survivors were rescued Saturday, including a family in Kahramanmaras, the Turkish city closest to the epicenter of Monday’s quake. Crews there helped 12-year-old Nehir Naz Narli to safety before going back for her parents.
In Gaziantep province, which borders Syria, a family of five was rescued from a demolished building in the city of Nurdagi, and a man and his 3-year-old daughter were pulled from debris in the town of Islahiye, television network HaberTurk reported. A 7-year-old girl was also rescued in Hatay province.
In Elbistan, a district in Kahramanmaras province, 20-year-old Melisa Ulku and another person were saved from the rubble 132 hours after the quake struck. Before she was brought to safety, police asked onlookers not to cheer or clap so as not to interfere with nearby rescue efforts.
Turkish TV station NTV reported that a 44-year-old man in Iskenderun, in Hatay province, was rescued 138 hours into his ordeal. Crying rescuers called it a miracle, with one saying they weren't expecting to find anyone alive but as they were digging, they saw his eyes and he said his name. In the same province, NTV also reported that a baby boy named Hamza was found alive in Antakya 140 hours after the quake. Some details of his rescue, including how he survived so long, weren't immediately clear.
Not every attempt ended happily. Zeynep Kahraman, who was brought out of the rubble after a spectacular rescue that took 50 hours, died at a hospital overnight. The ISAR German team who rescued her were shocked and saddened.
“It is important that the family could say goodbye, that they could see each other one more time, that they could hug each other again,” a member of the rescue team told German TV news channel n-tv.
The rescues came amid growing frustration over the Turkish government's response to the earthquake, which has killed 24,617 people and injured at least 80,000 people in Turkey alone.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged earlier in the week that the initial response was hampered by the extensive damage to roads and other infrastructure that made it difficult to reach some points. He also said the worst-affected area was 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter and was home to 13.5 million people in Turkey.
That has meant rescue crews have had to pick and choose how and where to help.
During a tour of quake-damaged cities Saturday, Erdogan said a disaster of this scope was rare and again referred to it as the “disaster of the century.”
But the challenges facing aid efforts were of little comfort to those waiting for help.
In Antakya, the capital of Hatay province, scattered rescue crews were still hard at work but many residents had left by Saturday. Among those who stayed were people with family still buried. Many of them had been camping in the streets for days and sleeping in cars.
Acting on a tip, a rescue team from Hong Kong found three survivors under a building near the city's center on Saturday, said Gallant Wong, the group's spokesperson.
But Bulent Cifcifli, a local man, said he has been waiting for days for crews to pull his mother's body from her collapsed home. He said rescuers were working to retrieve her body at one point, but they were called to another location because they suspected there were survivors.
“Six days later, we don’t know how many are still under the rubble, and how many are dead or alive,” Cifcifli said, blaming a lack of heavy equipment.
Yazi al-Ali, a Syrian refugee who came to Antakya from Reyhanli, has been living in a tent as she waits for crews to find her mother, two sisters, including one who was pregnant, and their families. At one point, she stood over the rubble of the home in Antakya's old city center where she believes her pregnant sister was buried and, in a cracking voice, shouted her sister's name, “Rajha!”
“No one is answering to us, and no one comes to look,” she said. “They have stopped us from looking ourselves. I don’t know why.”
As aid continued to arrive Saturday, 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.
One man, Sukru Canbulat, was wheeled into the hospital, his left leg badly injured with deep bruising, contusions and lacerations.
Wincing in pain, he said he was rescued from his collapsed apartment building in nearby Antakya within hours of the quake. But after receiving basic first aid, he was released without getting proper treatment.
“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 8½ months pregnant.
A large makeshift graveyard was under construction in Antakya's outskirts on Saturday. Backhoes and bulldozers dug pits in the field as trucks and ambulances loaded with black body bags arrived continuously. Soldiers directing traffic on the busy adjacent road warned motorists not to take photos.
The hundreds of graves, spaced no more than 3 feet (a meter) apart, were marked with simple wooden planks set vertically in the ground.
A worker with Turkey’s Ministry of Religious Affairs who didn't wish to be identified because of orders not to share information with the media said that around 800 bodies were brought to the cemetery Friday, its first day of operation. By midday Saturday, he said, as many as 2,000 had been buried.
The disaster compounded suffering in a region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war, which has displaced millions of people within the country and left them dependent on aid. The fighting sent millions more to seek refuge in Turkey.
The conflict has isolated many areas of Syria and complicated efforts to get aid in. The United Nations said the first earthquake-related aid convoy crossed from Turkey into northwestern Syria on Friday, the day after an aid shipment planned before the disaster arrived. The U.N. refugee agency estimated that as many as 5.3 million people have been left homeless in Syria alone.
The death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue worker group the White Helmets. The overall death toll in Syria stood at 3,553 on Saturday, though the 1,387 deaths reported for government-held parts of the country hadn’t been updated in days.
____
Spike reported from Antakya, Turkey, and Bilginsoy reported from Istanbul. Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Ghaith Alsayed in Bab al-Hawa, Syria, Sarah El Deeb in Antakya, Turkey, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,769
Disasters like this one bring out the best in people but, unfortunately, sometimes the worst:
Warning violence hampering earthquake rescue efforts in Turkey
As death toll in Syria and Turkey passes 28,000, rescuers say unrest paused search operations
Rescuers in southern Turkey
have warned that efforts to find survivors after the earthquake have
been hampered by outbreaks of violence, as the death toll in Syria and
Turkey passed 28,000.
German rescuers and the Austrian army paused search operations on Saturday, citing fighting between unidentified groups.
An
Austrian army spokesperson said altercations between groups in the
Hatay province resulted in dozens of personnel from the Austrian Forces
Disaster Relief Unit seeking shelter in a base camp with other
international organisations, the BBC reported.
More at link.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
Variously credited to Mark Twain or Edward Abbey.
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,932
Turkey probes contractors as earthquake deaths pass 33,000
By JUSTIN SPIKE, ZEYNEP BILGINSOY and SARAH EL DEEB
33 mins ago
ANTAKYA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish authorities are targeting contractors allegedly linked with buildings that collapsed in the powerful Feb. 6 earthquakes as rescuers found more survivors in the rubble Sunday, including a pregnant woman and two children, in the disaster that killed over 33,000 people.
The death toll from the magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 quakes that struck nine hours apart in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria rose to 33,185 and was certain to increase as search teams find more bodies.
As despair bred rage at the agonizingly slow rescues, the focus turned to assigning blame.
Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 131 people were under investigation for their alleged responsibility in the construction of buildings that failed to withstand the quakes. While the quakes were powerful, many in Turkey blame faulty construction for multiplying the devastation.
Turkey's construction codes meet current earthquake-engineering standards, at least on paper, but they are rarely enforced, explaining why thousands of buildings toppled over or pancaked down onto the people inside.
Among those facing scrutiny were two people arrested in Gaziantep province on suspicion of cutting down columns to make extra room in a building that collapsed, the state-run Anadolu Agency said. The justice ministry said three people were arrested, seven others were detained and another seven were barred from leaving Turkey.
Two contractors held responsible for the destruction of buildings in Adiyaman were arrested Sunday at Istanbul Airport while trying to leave the country, the private DHA news agency and other media reported. One detained contractor, Yavuz Karakus, told DHA: “My conscience is clear. I built 44 buildings. Four of them were demolished. I did everything according to the rules.”
Rescuers reported finding more survivors amid increasingly long odds. Thermal cameras were used as crews demanded silence to hear those trapped.
In hard-hit Hatay province, a 50-year-old woman who appeared badly injured was carried out by crews in the town of Iskenderun. Similar rescues in the province saved two other women, one of them pregnant, according to broadcasters TRT and HaberTurk.
HaberTurk showed a 6-year-old boy rescued from his wrecked home in Adiyaman. An exhausted rescuer removed his surgical mask and took deep breaths as several women cried in joy.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca posted a video of a young girl in a navy blue jumper who was found alive. “There is always hope!” he tweeted.
Rescuers in Antakya, elsewhere in Hatay province, pulled a man in his late 20s or 30s from the rubble, saying he was one of nine trapped in the building. He waved weakly as he was removed on a stretcher as workers applauded and chanted, “God is great!”
German and Turkish workers rescued an 88-year-old in Kirikhan, German news agency dpa reported. Italian and Turkish rescuers found a 35-year-old man in Antakya who appeared unscathed, private NTV television reported.
A child was freed overnight in the town of Nizip, in Gaziantep, state-run Anadolu Agency said, while a 32-year woman was found in a wrecked eight-story building in Antakya and asked for tea when she emerged, according to NTV.
Those were the rare exceptions.
Backhoes and bulldozers prepared a large cemetery in Antakya’s outskirts as trucks and ambulances brought a steady stream of black body bags. Hundreds of graves were marked with simple wooden planks.
Hatay’s airport reopened Sunday after its runway was repaired, and military and commercial planes ferried in supplies and will take away evacuees.
There are 34,717 Turkish personnel involved in rescue efforts. On Sunday, Turkey's Foreign Ministry said they were joined by 9,595 personnel from 74 countries, with more on the way.
In the Syrian capital of Damascus, the head of the World Health Organization warned that the pain will ripple forward, calling the disaster an “unfolding tragedy that’s affecting millions.”
“The compounding crises of conflict, COVID, cholera, economic decline, and now the earthquake have taken an unbearable toll,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Tedros said WHO experts were waiting to enter northwestern Syria “where we have been told the impact is even worse.”
U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths, visiting the Turkish-Syrian border Sunday, said Syrians are “looking for international help that hasn’t arrived.”
“We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned,” he said, adding, “My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.”
In the town of Atareb, in opposition-run northern Aleppo province, Abdel-Haseeb Abdel-Raheem returned Sunday to his ruined four-story building to try to salvage any valuables but could find only blankets, pillows and some clothes. His aunt and her husband died there, but their three children survived.
With no international rescue efforts in the war-battered region, the 34-year-old had to recover the bodies himself.
“You can’t hear someone inside screaming and sit tight. You can’t sit still. You can’t have the heart to hear someone (crying for help) and you do nothing,” he said, sitting above a mound of debris.
Political disputes have held up aid convoys sent from areas of northeast Syria controlled by U.S.-backed Kurdish groups to those controlled by the Syrian government and by Turkish-backed rebels who have fought with the Kurdish groups over the years.
A U.N. aid convoy sent to northwestern Syria through government-held areas was postponed due to obstruction from Hay’at Tahrir al Sham, an al-Qaida affiliated group ruling Idlib province, a U.N. spokesperson told The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, U.N. aid convoys continue to cross from Turkey into northwestern Syria through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing. The first U.N. convoy only reached northwest Syria from Turkey on Thursday, three days after the disaster struck.
Before that, it was only a steady stream of bodies coming through Bab al-Hawa: Syrian refugees who had fled the civil war and settled in Turkey but died in the disaster, being returned home for burial.
The earthquake death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue group the White Helmets. The overall death toll in Syria stood at 3,553 on Saturday, although the 1,387 deaths reported for government-held parts of the country hadn’t been updated in days. Turkey’s death toll was 29,605 as of Sunday.
Turkey’s Justice Ministry announced the establishment of Earthquake Crimes Investigation bureaus to identify contractors and others responsible for building works. It would gather evidence; instruct experts including architects, geologists and engineers; and check building permits and occupation permits.
A contractor was detained Friday at Istanbul airport before he could leave the country. He built a luxury 12-story building called Ronesans Rezidans in Antakya, and when it fell, it killed an untold number. He was formally arrested Saturday.
In leaked testimony published by Anadolu, the man said the building followed regulations and he did not know why it didn't stay standing. His lawyer suggested his client was a scapegoat.
Under programs that allowed building owners to pay fines instead of bringing them up to code, the government agency responsible for enforcement acknowledged in 2019 that over half of all buildings in Turkey — accounting for some 13 million apartments— were not in compliance.
The detentions could help direct public anger toward builders and contractors, deflecting it from local and state officials who allowed apparently substandard construction to proceed. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, already burdened by an economic downturn and high inflation, faces parliamentary and presidential elections in May.
The nongovernmental business organization TURKONFED estimated the earthquake damage at $84.1 billion, based on statistics from the devastating 1999 quake in northwestern Turkey, including $70.1 billion in housing and $10.4 billion to gross domestic product.
Rescue crews have been overwhelmed by the widespread damage that has affected roads and airports, making it even harder to move quickly.
Erdogan acknowledged the initial response was hampered by the damage, with the worst-affected area 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter and home to 13.5 million. During a tour Saturday, Erdogan said such a tragedy was rare, referring to it as the “disaster of the century” in multiple speeches.
In New York City, mourners gathered Saturday at a mosque to remember a family of four from the borough of Queens who were killed while visiting relatives in Turkey. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Burak and Kimberly Firik and their sons, aged 1 and 2, died in the disaster.
___
Bilginsoy reported from Istanbul. Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Abby Sewell in Beirut, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Sarah El Deeb in Atareb, Syria, contributed.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,932
Grief gives way to anger over Turkey's earthquake response
By JUSTIN SPIKE and BERNAT ARMANGUÉ
1 hour ago
ANTAKYA, Turkey (AP) — When Zafer Mahmut Boncuk's apartment building collapsed in Turkey's devastating earthquake, he discovered his 75-year-old mother was still alive — but pinned under the wreckage.
For hours, Boncuk frantically searched for someone in the ancient, devastated city of Antakya to help him free her. He was able to talk to her, hold her hand and give her water. Despite his pleas, however, no one came, and she died on Tuesday, the day after the quake.
Like many others in Turkey, his sorrow and disbelief have turned to rage over the sense there has been an unfair and ineffective response to the historic disaster that has killed tens of thousands of people there and in Syria.
Boncuk directed his anger at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, especially because she seemed so close to rescue but no one came. Her remains were finally removed Sunday, nearly a week after the building collapsed. His father's body is still in the rubble.
“What would happen if it was your own mother, dear Recep Tayyip Erdogan? What happened to being a world leader? Where are you? Where?” he screamed.
“I gave her water to drink, I cleared her face of rubble. I told her that I would save her. But I failed,” said Boncuk, 60. “The last time we spoke, I asked if I should help her drink some water. She said no, so I rubbed some water on her lips. Ten minutes later, she died.”
He blamed “ignorance and lack of information and care — that’s why my mother died in front of my eyes.”
Many in Turkey express similar frustration that rescue operations have been painfully slow since the Feb. 6 quakes and that valuable time was lost during the narrow window for finding people alive.
Others, particularly in southern Hatay province near the Syrian border, say Erdogan’s government was late in delivering assistance to the hardest-hit region for what they suspect are both political and religious reasons.
In the southeastern town of Adiyaman, Elif Busra Ozturk waited outside the wreckage of a building on Saturday where her uncle and aunt were trapped and believed dead, and where the bodies of two of her cousins already had been found.
“For three days, I waited outside for help. No one came. There were so few rescue teams that they could only intervene in places they were sure there were people alive,” she said.
At the same complex, Abdullah Tas, 66, said he had been sleeping in a car near the building where his son, daughter-in-law and four grandchildren were buried. He said that rescuers had first arrived four days after the earthquake struck. The Associated Press could not independently verify his claim.
“What good is that for the people under the debris?” he asked.
Onlookers stood behind police tape Saturday in Antakya as bulldozers clawed at a high-rise luxury apartment building that had toppled onto its side.
Over 1,000 residents had been in the 12-story building when the quake struck, according to relatives watching the recovery effort. They said hundreds were still inside but complained the effort to free them had been slow and not serious.
“This is an atrocity, I don’t know what to say,” said Bediha Kanmaz, 60. The bodies of his son and 7-month-old grandson had been pulled from the building — still locked in an embrace — but his daughter-in-law was still inside.
“We open body bags to see if they’re ours, we’re checking if they’re our children. We’re even checking the ones that are torn to pieces,” she said of herself and other grief-stricken relatives.
Kanmaz also blamed Turkey’s government for the slow response, and accused the national rescue service of failing to do enough to recover people alive.
She and others in Antakya expressed the belief that the presence of a large minority of Alevis — an Anatolian Islamic community that differs from Sunni and Shia Islam and Alawites in Syria — had made them a low priority for the government. Traditionally, few Alevis vote for Erdogan’s ruling party. There was no evidence, however, that the region was overlooked for sectarian reasons.
Erdogan said Wednesday that disaster efforts were continuing in all 10 affected provinces and dismissed allegations of no help from state institutions like the military as “lies, fake slander.”
But he has acknowledged shortcomings. Officials said rescue efforts in Hatay were initially complicated by the destruction of the local airport’s runway and bad road conditions.
Anger over the extent of the destruction, however, is not limited to individuals. Turkish authorities have been detaining or issuing detention warrants for dozens of people allegedly involved in the construction of buildings that collapsed, and the justice minister has vowed to punish those responsible.
Kanmaz blamed negligence on the part of the developer of the apartment building where her family had been killed.
“If I could wrap my hands around the contractor’s neck, I would tear him to shreds,” she said.
That contractor, who oversaw the construction of the 250-unit building, was detained at Istanbul Airport on Friday before boarding a flight out of the country, Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency reported. On Saturday, he was formally arrested. His lawyer suggested the public was looking for a scapegoat.
In multiethnic southern Turkey, other tensions are rising. Some expressed frustration that Syrian refugees who fled to the region from their devastating civil war are burdening the sparse welfare system and competing for resources with Turkish people.
“There are many poor people in Hatay, but they don’t offer us any welfare; they give it to the Syrians. They give so much to the Syrians,” Kanmaz said. “There are more Syrians than Turks here.”
There were signs Saturday the tensions could be boiling over.
Two German aid groups and the Austrian Armed Forces temporarily interrupted their rescue work in the Hatay region citing fears for the safety of their staff. They resumed work after the Turkish army secured the area, the Austrian Defense Ministry spokesman tweeted.
“There is increasing tension between different groups in Turkey,” Lt. Col. Pierre Kugelweis of the Austrian Armed Forces told the APA news agency. “Shots have reportedly been fired.”
German news agency dpa reported that Steven Berger, chief of operations of the aid group I.S.A.R. Germany, said that “it can be seen that grief is slowly giving way to anger” in Turkey’s affected regions.
For Kanmaz, it was a mixture of grief and anger.
“I’m angry. Life is over,” she said. “We live for our children; what matters most to us is our children. We exist if they exist. Now we are over. Everything you see here is over.”
____
Emrah Gurel in Adiyaman, Turkey, Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul, Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed.
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brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 40,769
The real disaster here is that the death toll in Turkey and Syria totaled will likely top 50,000. Inevitable there will be losses in this kind of earthquake but way more lives were lost in this one for reasons evident in the article Mickey and others have posted. A terrible, unnecessary shame.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man [or woman] who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
ANTAKYA, Turkey (AP) — Six days after the earthquake that flattened parts of Turkey and Syria, two survivors emerged from the rubble. They were dogs, the focus of a parallel rescue effort underway.
“One of the dogs clung to its owner’s corpse, and it was absolutely a miracle that it was rescued six days later,” said Csenay Tekinbas, a representative of the local HAYTAP animal welfare group.
“I hope it holds on to life,” Tekinbas said of the dog that finally left its dead owner. “I hope we can give it a new life.”
Already, field hospitals have been set up in four cities to care for rescued pets.
Survival is just the first step. Those hurrying to find and care for pets also struggle to give them proper care. “There is no food, bird food, chicken feed or anything in any pet shop at the moment. Because everywhere is either closed or collapsed,” Tekinbas said.
Large bags of pet food are stacked at a relief station in one Antakya square, their crisp images of green lawns and happily panting pets contrasting with the grim surroundings. Nearby, a burly dog nibbles at a bowl.
The outreach to save pets goes as far as pounding down doors. After being alerted to a dog apparently left alone on the fourth floor of a building, HAYTAP workers put on hard hats and broke into the apartment to rescue a large, fluffy German shepherd.
As the dog slurped noisily at a metal bowl of water downstairs in a crumbling alley, the workers lavished affection on it. ___
Robert Bandendieck in Istanbul contributed to this report.
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There was a baby born under the rubble. The mother was killed during the collapse but the baby miraculously was alive. They named her "Aya" which means Miracle in Arabic.
There was a baby born under the rubble. The mother was killed during the collapse but the baby miraculously was alive. They named her "Aya" which means Miracle in Arabic.
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To accommodate for this structural hazard, the building’s construction is designed to resist the region’s biggest earthquakes. Its foundation consists of 42 piles sunk roughly 91 meters to bedrock and a 4.3-meter-thick foundation mat. The 61st floor functions as a viewing platform and communal lounge area for the Salesforce workers and visitors. The corporation offered advanced signup for open visits of the observation deck once a month. Above the 61st story of the skyscraper, it has been described as “mainly decorative.”
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
ISKENDERUN, Turkey (AP) — Six relatives huddled in a small air pocket, day after day. A desperate teenager grew so thirsty that he drank his own urine. Two frightened sisters were comforted by a pop song as they waited for rescuers to free them.
These earthquake survivors were among more than a dozen people pulled out of the rubble alive Friday after spending over four days trapped in frigid darkness following the disaster that struck Turkey and Syria.
The unlikely rescues, coming so long after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake brought down thousands of buildings, offered fleeting moments of joy amid a catastrophe that has killed nearly 24,000 people, injured at least 80,000 others and left millions homeless.
In the Mediterranean coastal city of Iskenderun, a crowd chanted “God is great!” as Haci Murat Kilinc and his wife, Raziye, were carried on stretchers to a waiting ambulance.
“You’ve been working so many hours, God bless you!” a relative of the couple told one of their saviors.
One rescue worker said that Kilinc had been joking with crew members while still trapped beneath the rubble, trying to boost their morale.
Two hours earlier in Kahramanmaras, the city closest to the epicenter, rescuers embraced and chanted their thanks to God after pulling a man from his collapsed home.
In Adiyaman, a hard-hit city of more than a quarter-million people, rescuers and onlookers suppressed their joy so as not to frighten 4-year-old Yagiz Komsu as he emerged from the debris, according the HaberTurk television, which broadcast the rescue live.
To distract him, he was given a jelly bean. Teams later rescued his 27-year-old mother, Ayfer Komsu, who had a broken rib.
But the flurry of dramatic rescues could not obscure the devastation spread across a sprawling border region that is home to more than 13.5 million people. Entire neighborhoods of high-rises have been reduced to rubble, and the quake has already killed more people than Japan’s Fukushima earthquake and tsunami, with many more bodies yet to be recovered and counted.
Relatives wept and chanted as rescuers pulled 17-year-old Adnan Muhammed Korkut from a basement in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, near the quake’s epicenter. He had been trapped for 94 hours, forced to drink his own urine to survive.
“Thank God you arrived,” he said, embracing his mother and others who leaned down to kiss and hug him as he was being loaded into an ambulance.
For one of the rescuers, identified only as Yasemin, Adnan’s survival hit home hard.
“I have a son just like you,” she told him after giving him a warm hug. “I swear to you, I have not slept for four days. … I was trying to get you out.”
Elsewhere, HaberTurk television said rescuers had identified nine people trapped inside the remains of a high-rise apartment block in Iskenderun and pulled out six of them, including a woman who waved at onlookers as she was being carried away on a stretcher. The crowd shouted “God is great!” after she was brought out.
The building was only 600 feet (200 meters) from the Mediterranean Sea and narrowly avoided being flooded when the massive earthquake sent water surging into the city center.
Video of another rescue effort in Kahramanmaras showed an emergency worker playing a pop song on his smartphone to distract the two teenage sisters as they waited to be freed.
There were still more stories: A German team said it worked for more than 50 hours to free a woman from a collapsed house in Kirikhan. And a trapped woman could be heard speaking to a team trying to dig her out in video broadcast by HaberTurk television. She told her would-be rescuers that she had given up hope of being found — and prayed to be put to sleep because she was so cold. The station did not say where the operation was taking place.
Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the odds of finding more survivors were quickly waning.
Death loomed everywhere: Morgues and cemeteries were overwhelmed, and bodies wrapped in blankets, rugs and tarps lay in the streets of some cities.
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 was still struggling to reach many people in need.
The disaster compounded suffering in a region beset by Syria's 12-year civil war, which has displaced millions of people within the country and left them dependent on aid. The fighting sent millions more to seek refuge in Turkey.
The conflict has isolated many areas of Syria and complicated efforts to get aid in. The United Nations said the first earthquake-related aid convoy crossed from Turkey into northwestern Syria on Friday — a day after an aid shipment planned before the disaster arrived.
The U.N. refugee agency estimated that as many as 5.3 million people have been left homeless in Syria. Sivanka Dhanapala, the country representative in Syria for UNHCR, told reporters Friday that the agency is focusing on providing tents, plastic sheeting, thermal blankets, sleeping mats and winter clothing.
Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife, Asmaa, visited survivors at the Aleppo University Hospital, according to Syrian state media. It was the leader's first public appearance in an affected area of the country since the disaster. He then visited rescuers in one of the city's hardest-hit areas.
Aleppo has been scarred by years of heavy bombardment and shelling — much of it by the forces of Assad and his ally, Russia — and it was among the cities most devastated by the earthquake.
The Syrian government also announced that it will allow aid to reach all parts of the country, including areas held by insurgent groups in the northwest.
Also Friday, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, declared a cease-fire in its separatist insurgency in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, including some areas affected by the quake.
Turkey’s disaster-management agency said more than 20,200 people had been confirmed killed in the disaster so far in Turkey, with more than 80,000 injured.
More than 3,500 have been confirmed killed in Syria, bringing the total number of dead to nearly 24,000.
Some 12,000 buildings in Turkey have either collapsed or sustained serious damage, according to Turkey’s minister of environment and urban planning, Murat Kurum. Turkey's vice president, Fuat Oktay, said more than 1 million people were being housed in temporary shelters.
Engineers suggested that the scale of the devastation was partly explained by lax enforcement of building codes.
___
Alsayed reported from Bab al-Hawa, Syria. Bilginsoy reported from Istanbul. Associated Press journalists Robert Badendieck in Istanbul; Mehmet Guzel in Antakya, Turkey; Emrah Gurel and Yakup Paksoy in Adiyaman, Turkey; Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey; Bassem Mroue and Abby Sewell in Beirut; Salar Salim in Erbil, Iraq; Hogir al-Abdo in Manbij, Syria; and David Rising in Bangkok contributed to this report.
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To be honest, I wish thee damn thing were actually a rocket and would blast off and keep going. To my eyes, it ruined the skyline of my favorite city. But I guess that's "progress".
Will Turkey’s earthquake response threaten President Erdogan’s grip on power?
After the disaster, Erdogan’s decisions — past and present — are under scrutiny.
The earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey this week is now one of the deadliest disasters in decades. More than 20,000 people have been killed in Turkey and Syria, with the toll expected to rise as wintry conditions and time foreclose the chance to pull survivors from the rubble.
In Turkey alone, an estimated 16,000 have been killed. More than 6,400 buildings have collapsed in an area that was prone to earthquakes and whose recent buildings were, if not earthquake-proofed, supposed to be better able to withstand the next big tremor. Which means now, as the emergency unfolds into a sustained tragedy, it looks as if Turkey was unprepared for a disaster that was a matter of when, not if.
In Turkey, this is raising questions about who is responsible — and right now, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) are facing scrutiny from survivors and opposition politicians for potentially making Turkey more vulnerable to the quake, and for the government response in the aftermath.
continues.....
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Valpara%C3%ADso_earthquake_and_the_El_Cobre_dam_failures
and was 1 month away from being born in 1960 when a 9.5 hit Chile I have to ask my father how they survived it, my mother was visiting in 1985 the day after she left to come back to USA the country got hit with a big earthquake! I still remember the streets moving as if they were sitting on water when I was 5
LATAKIA, Syria (AP) — Ibrahim Zakaria lost track of time drifting into and out of consciousness while trapped for nearly five days in the rubble of his home following the massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria this week.
The 23-year-old cellphone shop worker from the Syrian town of Jableh survived on dirty drips of water and eventually lost hope that he’d be saved.
“I said I am dead and it will be impossible for me to live again,” Zakaria, who was rescued Friday night, told The Associated Press on Saturday from his bed at a hospital in the coastal city of Latakia where his 60-year-old mother, Duha Nurallah, was also recovering.
Five days after two powerful earthquakes hours apart caused thousands of buildings to collapse, killing more than 28,000 people and leaving millions homeless, rescuers were still pulling unlikely survivors from the ruins — one of them just 7 months old.
Although each rescue elicited hugs and shouts of “Allahu akbar!” — “God is great!” — from the weary men and women working tirelessly in the freezing temperatures to save lives, they were the exception in a region blanketed by grief, desperation and mounting frustration.
More than a dozen survivors were rescued Saturday, including a family in Kahramanmaras, the Turkish city closest to the epicenter of Monday’s quake. Crews there helped 12-year-old Nehir Naz Narli to safety before going back for her parents.
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Live Updates I Focus turns to quake aid, as rescues continue
Rescuers rejoice as more quake survivors emerge from rubble
AP Week in Pictures: Global / Feb. 4-10, 2023
Quake brings chance for Syria's Assad to ease isolation
In Gaziantep province, which borders Syria, a family of five was rescued from a demolished building in the city of Nurdagi, and a man and his 3-year-old daughter were pulled from debris in the town of Islahiye, television network HaberTurk reported. A 7-year-old girl was also rescued in Hatay province.
In Elbistan, a district in Kahramanmaras province, 20-year-old Melisa Ulku and another person were saved from the rubble 132 hours after the quake struck. Before she was brought to safety, police asked onlookers not to cheer or clap so as not to interfere with nearby rescue efforts.
Turkish TV station NTV reported that a 44-year-old man in Iskenderun, in Hatay province, was rescued 138 hours into his ordeal. Crying rescuers called it a miracle, with one saying they weren't expecting to find anyone alive but as they were digging, they saw his eyes and he said his name. In the same province, NTV also reported that a baby boy named Hamza was found alive in Antakya 140 hours after the quake. Some details of his rescue, including how he survived so long, weren't immediately clear.
Not every attempt ended happily. Zeynep Kahraman, who was brought out of the rubble after a spectacular rescue that took 50 hours, died at a hospital overnight. The ISAR German team who rescued her were shocked and saddened.
“It is important that the family could say goodbye, that they could see each other one more time, that they could hug each other again,” a member of the rescue team told German TV news channel n-tv.
The rescues came amid growing frustration over the Turkish government's response to the earthquake, which has killed 24,617 people and injured at least 80,000 people in Turkey alone.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged earlier in the week that the initial response was hampered by the extensive damage to roads and other infrastructure that made it difficult to reach some points. He also said the worst-affected area was 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter and was home to 13.5 million people in Turkey.
That has meant rescue crews have had to pick and choose how and where to help.
During a tour of quake-damaged cities Saturday, Erdogan said a disaster of this scope was rare and again referred to it as the “disaster of the century.”
But the challenges facing aid efforts were of little comfort to those waiting for help.
In Antakya, the capital of Hatay province, scattered rescue crews were still hard at work but many residents had left by Saturday. Among those who stayed were people with family still buried. Many of them had been camping in the streets for days and sleeping in cars.
Acting on a tip, a rescue team from Hong Kong found three survivors under a building near the city's center on Saturday, said Gallant Wong, the group's spokesperson.
But Bulent Cifcifli, a local man, said he has been waiting for days for crews to pull his mother's body from her collapsed home. He said rescuers were working to retrieve her body at one point, but they were called to another location because they suspected there were survivors.
“Six days later, we don’t know how many are still under the rubble, and how many are dead or alive,” Cifcifli said, blaming a lack of heavy equipment.
Yazi al-Ali, a Syrian refugee who came to Antakya from Reyhanli, has been living in a tent as she waits for crews to find her mother, two sisters, including one who was pregnant, and their families. At one point, she stood over the rubble of the home in Antakya's old city center where she believes her pregnant sister was buried and, in a cracking voice, shouted her sister's name, “Rajha!”
“No one is answering to us, and no one comes to look,” she said. “They have stopped us from looking ourselves. I don’t know why.”
Even though experts say trapped people can live for a week or more, the odds of finding additional survivors are quickly waning. 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.
As aid continued to arrive Saturday, 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.
One man, Sukru Canbulat, was wheeled into the hospital, his left leg badly injured with deep bruising, contusions and lacerations.
Wincing in pain, he said he was rescued from his collapsed apartment building in nearby Antakya within hours of the quake. But after receiving basic first aid, he was released without getting proper treatment.
“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 8½ months pregnant.
A large makeshift graveyard was under construction in Antakya's outskirts on Saturday. Backhoes and bulldozers dug pits in the field as trucks and ambulances loaded with black body bags arrived continuously. Soldiers directing traffic on the busy adjacent road warned motorists not to take photos.
The hundreds of graves, spaced no more than 3 feet (a meter) apart, were marked with simple wooden planks set vertically in the ground.
A worker with Turkey’s Ministry of Religious Affairs who didn't wish to be identified because of orders not to share information with the media said that around 800 bodies were brought to the cemetery Friday, its first day of operation. By midday Saturday, he said, as many as 2,000 had been buried.
The disaster compounded suffering in a region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war, which has displaced millions of people within the country and left them dependent on aid. The fighting sent millions more to seek refuge in Turkey.
The conflict has isolated many areas of Syria and complicated efforts to get aid in. The United Nations said the first earthquake-related aid convoy crossed from Turkey into northwestern Syria on Friday, the day after an aid shipment planned before the disaster arrived. The U.N. refugee agency estimated that as many as 5.3 million people have been left homeless in Syria alone.
The death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue worker group the White Helmets. The overall death toll in Syria stood at 3,553 on Saturday, though the 1,387 deaths reported for government-held parts of the country hadn’t been updated in days.
____
Spike reported from Antakya, Turkey, and Bilginsoy reported from Istanbul. Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Ghaith Alsayed in Bab al-Hawa, Syria, Sarah El Deeb in Antakya, Turkey, and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP's earthquake coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/earthquakes
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Warning violence hampering earthquake rescue efforts in Turkey
As death toll in Syria and Turkey passes 28,000, rescuers say unrest paused search operations
Rescuers in southern Turkey have warned that efforts to find survivors after the earthquake have been hampered by outbreaks of violence, as the death toll in Syria and Turkey passed 28,000.
German rescuers and the Austrian army paused search operations on Saturday, citing fighting between unidentified groups.
An Austrian army spokesperson said altercations between groups in the Hatay province resulted in dozens of personnel from the Austrian Forces Disaster Relief Unit seeking shelter in a base camp with other international organisations, the BBC reported.
More at link.
ANTAKYA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish authorities are targeting contractors allegedly linked with buildings that collapsed in the powerful Feb. 6 earthquakes as rescuers found more survivors in the rubble Sunday, including a pregnant woman and two children, in the disaster that killed over 33,000 people.
The death toll from the magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 quakes that struck nine hours apart in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria rose to 33,185 and was certain to increase as search teams find more bodies.
As despair bred rage at the agonizingly slow rescues, the focus turned to assigning blame.
Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 131 people were under investigation for their alleged responsibility in the construction of buildings that failed to withstand the quakes. While the quakes were powerful, many in Turkey blame faulty construction for multiplying the devastation.
Turkey's construction codes meet current earthquake-engineering standards, at least on paper, but they are rarely enforced, explaining why thousands of buildings toppled over or pancaked down onto the people inside.
Among those facing scrutiny were two people arrested in Gaziantep province on suspicion of cutting down columns to make extra room in a building that collapsed, the state-run Anadolu Agency said. The justice ministry said three people were arrested, seven others were detained and another seven were barred from leaving Turkey.
EARTHQUAKES
After quake, war-hit Syrians struggle to get aid, rebuild
Grief gives way to anger over Turkey's earthquake response
Live Updates I Focus turns to quake aid, as rescues continue
Rescuers rejoice as more quake survivors emerge from rubble
Two contractors held responsible for the destruction of buildings in Adiyaman were arrested Sunday at Istanbul Airport while trying to leave the country, the private DHA news agency and other media reported. One detained contractor, Yavuz Karakus, told DHA: “My conscience is clear. I built 44 buildings. Four of them were demolished. I did everything according to the rules.”
Rescuers reported finding more survivors amid increasingly long odds. Thermal cameras were used as crews demanded silence to hear those trapped.
In hard-hit Hatay province, a 50-year-old woman who appeared badly injured was carried out by crews in the town of Iskenderun. Similar rescues in the province saved two other women, one of them pregnant, according to broadcasters TRT and HaberTurk.
HaberTurk showed a 6-year-old boy rescued from his wrecked home in Adiyaman. An exhausted rescuer removed his surgical mask and took deep breaths as several women cried in joy.
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca posted a video of a young girl in a navy blue jumper who was found alive. “There is always hope!” he tweeted.
Rescuers in Antakya, elsewhere in Hatay province, pulled a man in his late 20s or 30s from the rubble, saying he was one of nine trapped in the building. He waved weakly as he was removed on a stretcher as workers applauded and chanted, “God is great!”
German and Turkish workers rescued an 88-year-old in Kirikhan, German news agency dpa reported. Italian and Turkish rescuers found a 35-year-old man in Antakya who appeared unscathed, private NTV television reported.
A child was freed overnight in the town of Nizip, in Gaziantep, state-run Anadolu Agency said, while a 32-year woman was found in a wrecked eight-story building in Antakya and asked for tea when she emerged, according to NTV.
Those were the rare exceptions.
Backhoes and bulldozers prepared a large cemetery in Antakya’s outskirts as trucks and ambulances brought a steady stream of black body bags. Hundreds of graves were marked with simple wooden planks.
Hatay’s airport reopened Sunday after its runway was repaired, and military and commercial planes ferried in supplies and will take away evacuees.
There are 34,717 Turkish personnel involved in rescue efforts. On Sunday, Turkey's Foreign Ministry said they were joined by 9,595 personnel from 74 countries, with more on the way.
In the Syrian capital of Damascus, the head of the World Health Organization warned that the pain will ripple forward, calling the disaster an “unfolding tragedy that’s affecting millions.”
“The compounding crises of conflict, COVID, cholera, economic decline, and now the earthquake have taken an unbearable toll,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.
Tedros said WHO experts were waiting to enter northwestern Syria “where we have been told the impact is even worse.”
U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths, visiting the Turkish-Syrian border Sunday, said Syrians are “looking for international help that hasn’t arrived.”
“We have so far failed the people in northwest Syria. They rightly feel abandoned,” he said, adding, “My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as fast as we can.”
In the town of Atareb, in opposition-run northern Aleppo province, Abdel-Haseeb Abdel-Raheem returned Sunday to his ruined four-story building to try to salvage any valuables but could find only blankets, pillows and some clothes. His aunt and her husband died there, but their three children survived.
With no international rescue efforts in the war-battered region, the 34-year-old had to recover the bodies himself.
“You can’t hear someone inside screaming and sit tight. You can’t sit still. You can’t have the heart to hear someone (crying for help) and you do nothing,” he said, sitting above a mound of debris.
Political disputes have held up aid convoys sent from areas of northeast Syria controlled by U.S.-backed Kurdish groups to those controlled by the Syrian government and by Turkish-backed rebels who have fought with the Kurdish groups over the years.
A U.N. aid convoy sent to northwestern Syria through government-held areas was postponed due to obstruction from Hay’at Tahrir al Sham, an al-Qaida affiliated group ruling Idlib province, a U.N. spokesperson told The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, U.N. aid convoys continue to cross from Turkey into northwestern Syria through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing. The first U.N. convoy only reached northwest Syria from Turkey on Thursday, three days after the disaster struck.
Before that, it was only a steady stream of bodies coming through Bab al-Hawa: Syrian refugees who had fled the civil war and settled in Turkey but died in the disaster, being returned home for burial.
The earthquake death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, according to the rescue group the White Helmets. The overall death toll in Syria stood at 3,553 on Saturday, although the 1,387 deaths reported for government-held parts of the country hadn’t been updated in days. Turkey’s death toll was 29,605 as of Sunday.
Turkey’s Justice Ministry announced the establishment of Earthquake Crimes Investigation bureaus to identify contractors and others responsible for building works. It would gather evidence; instruct experts including architects, geologists and engineers; and check building permits and occupation permits.
A contractor was detained Friday at Istanbul airport before he could leave the country. He built a luxury 12-story building called Ronesans Rezidans in Antakya, and when it fell, it killed an untold number. He was formally arrested Saturday.
In leaked testimony published by Anadolu, the man said the building followed regulations and he did not know why it didn't stay standing. His lawyer suggested his client was a scapegoat.
Under programs that allowed building owners to pay fines instead of bringing them up to code, the government agency responsible for enforcement acknowledged in 2019 that over half of all buildings in Turkey — accounting for some 13 million apartments— were not in compliance.
The detentions could help direct public anger toward builders and contractors, deflecting it from local and state officials who allowed apparently substandard construction to proceed. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, already burdened by an economic downturn and high inflation, faces parliamentary and presidential elections in May.
The nongovernmental business organization TURKONFED estimated the earthquake damage at $84.1 billion, based on statistics from the devastating 1999 quake in northwestern Turkey, including $70.1 billion in housing and $10.4 billion to gross domestic product.
Rescue crews have been overwhelmed by the widespread damage that has affected roads and airports, making it even harder to move quickly.
Erdogan acknowledged the initial response was hampered by the damage, with the worst-affected area 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter and home to 13.5 million. During a tour Saturday, Erdogan said such a tragedy was rare, referring to it as the “disaster of the century” in multiple speeches.
In New York City, mourners gathered Saturday at a mosque to remember a family of four from the borough of Queens who were killed while visiting relatives in Turkey. The Council on American-Islamic Relations said Burak and Kimberly Firik and their sons, aged 1 and 2, died in the disaster.
___
Bilginsoy reported from Istanbul. Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Abby Sewell in Beirut, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Sarah El Deeb in Atareb, Syria, contributed.
___
Follow AP’s earthquake coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/earthquakes
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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ANTAKYA, Turkey (AP) — When Zafer Mahmut Boncuk's apartment building collapsed in Turkey's devastating earthquake, he discovered his 75-year-old mother was still alive — but pinned under the wreckage.
For hours, Boncuk frantically searched for someone in the ancient, devastated city of Antakya to help him free her. He was able to talk to her, hold her hand and give her water. Despite his pleas, however, no one came, and she died on Tuesday, the day after the quake.
Like many others in Turkey, his sorrow and disbelief have turned to rage over the sense there has been an unfair and ineffective response to the historic disaster that has killed tens of thousands of people there and in Syria.
Boncuk directed his anger at President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, especially because she seemed so close to rescue but no one came. Her remains were finally removed Sunday, nearly a week after the building collapsed. His father's body is still in the rubble.
“What would happen if it was your own mother, dear Recep Tayyip Erdogan? What happened to being a world leader? Where are you? Where?” he screamed.
“I gave her water to drink, I cleared her face of rubble. I told her that I would save her. But I failed,” said Boncuk, 60. “The last time we spoke, I asked if I should help her drink some water. She said no, so I rubbed some water on her lips. Ten minutes later, she died.”
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He blamed “ignorance and lack of information and care — that’s why my mother died in front of my eyes.”
Many in Turkey express similar frustration that rescue operations have been painfully slow since the Feb. 6 quakes and that valuable time was lost during the narrow window for finding people alive.
Others, particularly in southern Hatay province near the Syrian border, say Erdogan’s government was late in delivering assistance to the hardest-hit region for what they suspect are both political and religious reasons.
In the southeastern town of Adiyaman, Elif Busra Ozturk waited outside the wreckage of a building on Saturday where her uncle and aunt were trapped and believed dead, and where the bodies of two of her cousins already had been found.
“For three days, I waited outside for help. No one came. There were so few rescue teams that they could only intervene in places they were sure there were people alive,” she said.
At the same complex, Abdullah Tas, 66, said he had been sleeping in a car near the building where his son, daughter-in-law and four grandchildren were buried. He said that rescuers had first arrived four days after the earthquake struck. The Associated Press could not independently verify his claim.
“What good is that for the people under the debris?” he asked.
Onlookers stood behind police tape Saturday in Antakya as bulldozers clawed at a high-rise luxury apartment building that had toppled onto its side.
Over 1,000 residents had been in the 12-story building when the quake struck, according to relatives watching the recovery effort. They said hundreds were still inside but complained the effort to free them had been slow and not serious.
“This is an atrocity, I don’t know what to say,” said Bediha Kanmaz, 60. The bodies of his son and 7-month-old grandson had been pulled from the building — still locked in an embrace — but his daughter-in-law was still inside.
“We open body bags to see if they’re ours, we’re checking if they’re our children. We’re even checking the ones that are torn to pieces,” she said of herself and other grief-stricken relatives.
Kanmaz also blamed Turkey’s government for the slow response, and accused the national rescue service of failing to do enough to recover people alive.
She and others in Antakya expressed the belief that the presence of a large minority of Alevis — an Anatolian Islamic community that differs from Sunni and Shia Islam and Alawites in Syria — had made them a low priority for the government. Traditionally, few Alevis vote for Erdogan’s ruling party. There was no evidence, however, that the region was overlooked for sectarian reasons.
Erdogan said Wednesday that disaster efforts were continuing in all 10 affected provinces and dismissed allegations of no help from state institutions like the military as “lies, fake slander.”
But he has acknowledged shortcomings. Officials said rescue efforts in Hatay were initially complicated by the destruction of the local airport’s runway and bad road conditions.
Anger over the extent of the destruction, however, is not limited to individuals. Turkish authorities have been detaining or issuing detention warrants for dozens of people allegedly involved in the construction of buildings that collapsed, and the justice minister has vowed to punish those responsible.
Kanmaz blamed negligence on the part of the developer of the apartment building where her family had been killed.
“If I could wrap my hands around the contractor’s neck, I would tear him to shreds,” she said.
That contractor, who oversaw the construction of the 250-unit building, was detained at Istanbul Airport on Friday before boarding a flight out of the country, Turkey’s official Anadolu news agency reported. On Saturday, he was formally arrested. His lawyer suggested the public was looking for a scapegoat.
In multiethnic southern Turkey, other tensions are rising. Some expressed frustration that Syrian refugees who fled to the region from their devastating civil war are burdening the sparse welfare system and competing for resources with Turkish people.
“There are many poor people in Hatay, but they don’t offer us any welfare; they give it to the Syrians. They give so much to the Syrians,” Kanmaz said. “There are more Syrians than Turks here.”
There were signs Saturday the tensions could be boiling over.
Two German aid groups and the Austrian Armed Forces temporarily interrupted their rescue work in the Hatay region citing fears for the safety of their staff. They resumed work after the Turkish army secured the area, the Austrian Defense Ministry spokesman tweeted.
“There is increasing tension between different groups in Turkey,” Lt. Col. Pierre Kugelweis of the Austrian Armed Forces told the APA news agency. “Shots have reportedly been fired.”
German news agency dpa reported that Steven Berger, chief of operations of the aid group I.S.A.R. Germany, said that “it can be seen that grief is slowly giving way to anger” in Turkey’s affected regions.
For Kanmaz, it was a mixture of grief and anger.
“I’m angry. Life is over,” she said. “We live for our children; what matters most to us is our children. We exist if they exist. Now we are over. Everything you see here is over.”
____
Emrah Gurel in Adiyaman, Turkey, Zeynep Bilginsoy in Istanbul, Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed.
___
Follow AP’s earthquake coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/earthquakes
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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Prague Krakow Berlin 2018. Berlin 2022
EV, Taormina 1+2 2017.
I wish i was the souvenir you kept your house key on..
ANTAKYA, Turkey (AP) — Six days after the earthquake that flattened parts of Turkey and Syria, two survivors emerged from the rubble. They were dogs, the focus of a parallel rescue effort underway.
“One of the dogs clung to its owner’s corpse, and it was absolutely a miracle that it was rescued six days later,” said Csenay Tekinbas, a representative of the local HAYTAP animal welfare group.
“I hope it holds on to life,” Tekinbas said of the dog that finally left its dead owner. “I hope we can give it a new life.”
Already, field hospitals have been set up in four cities to care for rescued pets.
Survival is just the first step. Those hurrying to find and care for pets also struggle to give them proper care. “There is no food, bird food, chicken feed or anything in any pet shop at the moment. Because everywhere is either closed or collapsed,” Tekinbas said.
Large bags of pet food are stacked at a relief station in one Antakya square, their crisp images of green lawns and happily panting pets contrasting with the grim surroundings. Nearby, a burly dog nibbles at a bowl.
The outreach to save pets goes as far as pounding down doors. After being alerted to a dog apparently left alone on the fourth floor of a building, HAYTAP workers put on hard hats and broke into the apartment to rescue a large, fluffy German shepherd.
As the dog slurped noisily at a metal bowl of water downstairs in a crumbling alley, the workers lavished affection on it. ___
Robert Bandendieck in Istanbul contributed to this report.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
It's stories like this that give me hope.
Prague Krakow Berlin 2018. Berlin 2022
EV, Taormina 1+2 2017.
I wish i was the souvenir you kept your house key on..