President Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in 10 Turkish provinces devastated by two earthquakes that caused more than 7,200 dead and they left a trail of destruction across a wide area of southern Turkey and neighboring Syria.
A day after the quakes, overwhelmed rescue teams were struggling to save people trapped under the rubble.
As the magnitude of the catastrophe became more apparent, the number of fatalities looked set to rise considerably. A United Nations official said thousands of children were feared dead.
Residents of several affected Turkish cities have expressed their anger and despair at what they see as a slow and inadequate response by the authorities to the deadliest earthquake to hit Turkey since 1999.
“Not a single person has arrived here. We are under the snow, without a house, with nothing,” said Murat Alinak, whose house in Malatya collapsed and whose relatives are missing. “What am I going to do, where can I go?”
Monday’s 7.8 magnitude earthquakefollowed hours later by another almost as powerful, demolished thousands of buildingsincluding hospitals, schools and apartment blocks.
Tens of thousands of people have been injured or left homeless in cities across Turkey and northern Syria, as winter weather has hampered rescue and relief efforts and made the situation for the homeless even more miserable. Some areas were left without fuel or electricity.
Humanitarian officials expressed their particular concern about the situation in Syria, already affected by a humanitarian crisis after almost 12 years of civil war.
Erdogan declared 10 Turkish provinces a disaster area and imposed a state of emergency in them for three months. This will allow the Government to circumvent parliament in enacting new laws and limit or suspend rights and freedoms.
The government will open hotels in the tourist hub of Antalya to temporarily accommodate people affected by the quakes, said Erdogan, who is facing national elections in three months.
The death toll in Turkey rose to 5,434, according to Health Minister Fahrettin Koca, adding that 31,777 people had been injured. In Syria, the death toll has risen to at least 1,832, according to the government and a rescue service in the rebel-held northwest of the country.
every minute counts
According to the Turkish authorities, some 13.5 million people have been affected in an area that covers approximately 450 kilometers from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east, and 300 kilometers from Malatya in the north to Hatay. , In the south.
Syrian authorities have reported deaths as far south as Hama, some 250 kilometers from the epicenter.
“Now it’s a race against time,” said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminish.”
Throughout the region, rescue teams worked around the clock as people waited in anguish beside piles of rubble, clinging to the hope of finding friends, family and neighbors alive.
In Antakya, the capital of Hatay province, on the Syrian border, rescue teams were overwhelmed and the residents themselves were rummaging through the rubble. People asked for helmets, hammers, iron bars, and ropes.
A 54-year-old woman named Gulumser was pulled alive from an eight-story building 32 hours after the quake.
More than 12,000 Turkish search and rescue personnel are working in the affected areas, together with 9,000 soldiers. Some 70 countries are sending personnel, equipment and aid; but the magnitude of the disaster is overwhelming.
Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said 5,775 buildings had been destroyed by the quake and 20,426 people had been injured.
In Geneva, UNICEF spokesman James Elder said: “The earthquakes (…) may have killed thousands of children.”
Syrian refugees in the northwest of the country and in Turkey were among the most vulnerable people affected, Elder said.
In the Syrian city of Hama, Abdallah al-Dahan said that the funerals of several families who perished were taking place on Tuesday.
“It’s a terrifying scene in every way,” Dahan said, reached by phone.
“In all my life I have not seen anything like it, despite everything that has happened to us,” he added. Mosques had opened their doors to families whose houses had been damaged.
Syrian state news agency SANA said at least 812 people were killed and 1,449 wounded in the government-controlled provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, Idlib and Tartous.
At least 1,020 people have been killed in northwestern Syria by rebels and 2,300 injured, with the number expected to “drastically rise”, according to the White Helmets rescue team.
“Our teams make a lot of efforts, but they are unable to respond to the catastrophe and the large number of collapsed buildings,” said the head of the group, Raed al-Saleh.
Time is running out to save hundreds of families trapped under the rubble of the buildings and urgent help is needed from international groups, he said.
A senior UN humanitarian official said fuel shortages and harsh winter weather were also creating obstacles to their response.
“The infrastructure is damaged, the roads we used to use for humanitarian work are damaged, we have to be creative to reach people… but we are working hard,” UN Resident Coordinator El-Mostafa Benlamlih told Reuters. , in a videoconference interview from Damascus.
The Defense Ministry reported that a fire that had swept through hundreds of containers in the Turkish port of Iskenderun had been extinguished, but it was unclear when operations would resume.
