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Over the past several weeks, the hard work of rescuing people from the rubble of Turkey’s earthquake has sometimes seemed overwhelming, with volunteers often sifting through damaged buildings using only their hands and shovels.
But in the southern city of Osmaniye, that routine ended this weekend.
However, in the historic center core, where perhaps 800 or more people died in the collapsed structure, giant industrial-sized backhoes and excavators used enormous scoops to put the debris into dump trucks and haul it away.
Gone is the quiet pause to stop and listen for signs of life from below.
Turkey’s post-quake response has entered a new, grim and possibly angrier phase, where finding and burying the dead is a priority.
A few blocks away, in the city’s newly expanded cemetery, there was almost an assembly-line efficiency for the job. Several white tents with gurneys inside were tended by masked volunteers in white hazmat suits and long aprons.
According to Islamic tradition, the corpse is removed from the coffin and washed by volunteers before being buried and wrapped in a shroud or blanket.
Stacks of unused coffins – perhaps several hundred – were left in the parking lot, set aside to be used again to carry more bodies to the makeshift morgue.
CBC News has been asked not to talk to the families or volunteers at the site, so as not to cause grief.
However, we were allowed to walk through the cemetery, where we saw a newly prepared field, filled with countless fresh graves and backhoe piles of dirt on the newly buried.
Surviving the challenges of the next month
By the standards of last Monday’s twin earthquakes in southern Turkey and northern Syria, Osmaniye escaped catastrophic damage that almost destroyed cities such as Antakya and Kahramanmaras.
However, the survivors now face long and difficult months ahead.
Next to the Masal amusement park, many governmental and non-governmental organizations have set up relief centers with hundreds of tents and stalls, and volunteers offering hot meals.
“People are full of fear,” said the administrator, who did not want to be named because he is not authorized to speak to foreign journalists.
It’s the kind of fear that happens when your daily routine is thrown out of whack and your whole support system is broken, he said.
He said some families are staying for months in the camps, while others plan to stay only long enough to make arrangements to live with family members in other cities.
“I hope no one else in the world will witness the disaster,” said Ibrahim Ergen, who until the earthquake worked at a local Osmaniye restaurant as a food delivery driver.
“The restaurant is now under rubble. I have to try to find another job, so let’s see,” he said.
Some people at the humanitarian center say they will stay because they believe President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government will soon launch a rebuilding campaign and will get some construction jobs.
Destruction in Antakya
At least in Osmaniye, it is possible to think of the building being repaired and the business reopened.
However, in another part of the earthquake zone that CBC News visited last week, it’s hard to imagine what rebuilding efforts will begin, if at all.
In Antakya, the capital of Hatay province near the border with Syria, it looks like almost every building in the city has suffered significant damage – and almost every structure in the center of the city is unsurvivable or has collapsed.
On Ataturk Street, apartment block after apartment block fell sideways, falling on each other and causing a chain reaction like a row of toppling dominoes.
With many of the 12-story buildings now covered in three or four meters of concrete, no one knows how many people were sleeping during the quake and died.
“It’s tragic,” said volunteer Evrim Çakir as he struggled to stay calm while coordinating food and shelter for people in the Antakya riverside camp.
“The friends and relatives of everyone you see here are under the rubble,” he said, gesturing to the hundreds of people in the camp who immediately became homeless.
She says what worries her most is the state of the city’s sanitation – and particularly the impact it has on women’s mental health.
“We don’t have portable toilets, and the ones we have don’t work,” Çakir said.
“Women cry when they ask for underwear or sanitary pads – they have to ask [a stranger] so traumatic.”
Also helping in the humanitarian center is Dr. Metin Budak, who practiced medicine for 39 years in Antakya, before the earthquake destroyed his clinic and killed many of his staff.
Like almost everyone CBC News spoke to in the city, Budak has been sleeping outside or in his car for the past week.
“People are in shock,” he said, adding that he is deeply concerned — and angry — that survivors will get worse.
“The real psychological collapse will happen after the shock wears off,” he said.
When Budak was asked about his own condition – and the fate of the staff at his clinic – he said he was speechless and wiped tears from his eyes.
‘I’ve seen what I want’
Near the tents by the river, 100 rescuers, including a team from Bosnia, continued their efforts to free dozens of people believed to be inside the 12-story apartment building when it collapsed.
Among them was Ozgur Kesici’s mother, who spoke to CBC News as she watched the rescue efforts.
“I don’t feel anything right now,” he said as he watched his little house fall apart and the neighborhood he grew up in fall apart.
“I’ve seen things I’ve wanted to see. I’ve felt things I’ve wanted to feel. I just don’t feel anything right now.”
Kesici said his mother lived alone in the apartment, and although there was no sign of her, searchers found some of her belongings – including a bottle of Heineken beer, engraved with her name, which she kept in the house.
They also found several photos of mother and son together that were apparently posted on the wall.
Kesici had worked in finance in Germany and returned to Antakya after the earthquake.
The worst part, he said, was that he couldn’t complain about his loss to people he knew in town because he was going through his own hardships.
“Half the neighborhood, maybe more than that, is just powder. Everyone I talk to, friends, childhood friends or whoever, they all have their own pain.”
Unlike in Osmaniye, which can be an option for a few months, it is not possible in Antakya. Too many basic services are missing.
The single main road out of town has been jammed for days, with an exodus of people trying to get out.
Budak, a doctor at a riverside humanitarian center, said he felt Antakya was a place of thriving trade and culture for 2,000 years.
“I’m afraid it’s going to be a ghost town.”
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