Ridvan Cakiroglu, 8, was rescued by an Israeli search and rescue team from the rubble of a collapsed building 116 hours after the earthquake, on February 10, 2023 in Kahramanmaras, Turkey.
Anadolu Agency Getty Images
As the human death toll passed 28,000, desperation grew by the hour for those hoping to find their relatives alive in the rubble days after two earthquakes devastated Turkey and Syria.
But as rescue workers continued to search around the clock in freezing temperatures on Saturday, the chances of finding survivors among those trapped in the concrete piles of fallen houses and apartment blocks were slim, and the United Nations emergency coordinator warned that the number the victim may die. double.
In Turkey, 67 people have been clawed from the rubble in the previous 24 hours, Vice President Fuat Oktay told reporters on Friday, as reported by the Associated Press. He added that about 80,000 people were hospitalized, and more than 1 million were left homeless and in temporary shelters.
The comments came after NBC News witnessed Ozlem Yilmaz, 33, and his 6-year-old daughter Zeliha being pulled from the rubble of a building in the southeastern city of Adıyaman by Turkish miners with the help of an American rescue team.
“This is a miracle,” Ilkay’s brother Yavuz said after talking to him in the ambulance. “How can one live in the dust for five days?”
Yavuz’s joy soon faded because Ozlem’s 11-year-old daughter, Zeynep, died. Her husband, her cousin, Oguzhan Yilmaz, 43, was confirmed dead on Saturday.
As local media reported more people being pulled from the rubble on Saturday, Martin Griffiths, the UN emergency coordinator, warned that the death toll would rise.
“I think it’s difficult to estimate precisely, because we have to go into the ruins, but I believe it will double or more,” he told British broadcaster Sky News Saturday. “That’s terrifying. This is nature striking back in a really harsh way.” (Sky News is owned by Comcast, the parent company of NBC News.)
The first earthquake on Monday struck Turkey and neighboring Syria at noon and registered a magnitude of 7.8. It qualifies as “major” on the official magnitude scale. Hours later, a second earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.6, struck nearby.
Facing questions about earthquake planning and response times, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayip Erdogan, pledged this week to start work on rebuilding cities “in a few weeks,” saying hundreds of thousands of buildings were now uninhabitable, while issuing a stern warning to anyone involved. robbery earthquake zone.
The disaster comes as the president prepares for national elections scheduled to be held in June. Even before the earthquake, Erdogan’s popularity had eroded amid the declining cost of living and Turkey’s currency. Some analysts suggest the vote will be the toughest challenge of his two decades in power.
“There’s obviously a lot of anger about the immediate response,” said Howard Eissenstat, a nonresident scholar at the Middle East Institute, a Washington DC think tank. He added that Erdogan’s government must work hard before the election in order to win.
“In Turkey, they have very strict construction rules, and obviously when they are followed, some people die,” he said. But “everyone in Turkey knows – and I really mean everyone – the earthquake proof is a joke, it’s not done yet.
As a result, he said, “the government will certainly start many prosecutions after the incident, so it will do its best to demonstrate that the problem is serious, post-hoc.”
In neighboring Syria, the UN refugee agency estimates that 5.3 million people are homeless. More than 3,500 have been killed in Syria, where the death toll has not been updated since Friday.
The disaster has added to the suffering in a region forgotten by Syria’s 12-year civil war, which has isolated large parts of the country and complicated efforts to get aid.
The United Nations said the first earthquake-related aid convoy crossed from Turkey into northwestern Syria on Friday, a day after aid shipments were planned before disaster struck.