KAHRAMANMARAS/ANTAKYA, Turkey – Survivors joined a mass exodus from earthquake-hit zones in Turkey on Tuesday, some leaving their homes with little hope of coming back or seeing loved ones pulled away from the rubble, at a time when some of the rescue operations are leaving.
The disaster, with a combined death toll in Turkey (31,974) and neighboring Syria (more than 5,800) now exceeding 37,000, has devastated whole cities in both countries, leaving survivors homeless in the bitter cold, at times sleeping on piles of rubble.
Rare news of rescues eight days after the disaster still emerged, with an 18-year-old man pulled from the rubble of a building in southern Turkey, the third rescue on Tuesday.
Muhammed Cafer, whose rescue was reported by broadcaster CNN Turk, could be seen moving his fingers as he was carried away.
A little earlier, rescuers pulled two brothers alive from the ruins of an apartment block in Turkey’s Kahramanmaras province, who Anadolu news agency named as 17-year-old Muhammed Enes Yeninar and his brother, 21-year-old Baki Yeninar. They were taken to hospital although their condition was unclear.
“It is very hard … We will start from zero, without belongings, without a job,” said 22-year-old Hamza Bekry, a Syrian originally from Idlib who has lived in Hatay, in southern Turkey, for 12 years.
“Our house collapsed completely. Several of our relatives died, there are still ones under the rubble,” he added, as he prepared to follow his family to Isparta in southern Turkey.
He will become one of more than 158,000 people who have evacuated the vast swathe of southern Turkey hit by the quake, one of the deadliest tremors in the region’s modern history.
“I do not have a lot of expectation from this life but the lives of our children are important,” Riza Atahan, from Hatay, said as he put his wife and daughter on a bus heading to safety some 300 km (186 miles) away.
In Syria’s shattered Aleppo city, UN aid chief Martin Griffiths said on Monday that the rescue phase was “coming to a close,” with the focus turning to shelter, food and schooling as low temperatures reduced the already slim chances of survival.
In a public playground in Turkey’s southeastern city of Gaziantep, Syrian refugees made homeless by the quake used plastic sheets, blankets, cardboard and broken up pieces of furniture to erect makeshift tents on a patch of grass.
“People are suffering a lot. We applied to receive tent, aid or something but until now we didn’t receive anything,” said Hassan Saimoua, a refugee staying with his family in the playground.
ANGER
The search for survivors is about to end in the opposition-held north west of Syria eight days after the quake, the head of the White Helmets main rescue group, Raed al Saleh, said.
“The indications we have are that there are not any (survivors) but we are trying to do our final checks and on all sites,” he said.
Russia also said it was wrapping up its search and rescue work in Turkey and Syria and preparing to withdraw from the disaster zone.
Dozens of residents and first responders voiced bewilderment at a lack of water, food, medicine, body bags and cranes in the disaster zone in the first days after the quake.
“People are not dead because of the earthquake, they are dead because of precautions that weren’t taken earlier,” said Said Qudsi who lost his uncle, aunt and their two sons in the quake.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who faces an election scheduled for June that is expected to be the toughest of his two decades in power, acknowledged problems in the initial response but said the situation was now under control.
Turkey faces a bill of as much as $84 billion, a business group said. Turkey’s Urbanisation Minister Murat Kurum said some 42,000 buildings had either collapsed, were in urgent need of demolition, or severely damaged across 10 cities.
The Turkish toll was 31,974 killed, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said on Tuesday. More than 5,814 have died in Syria according to a Reuters tally of reports from Syrian state media and a UN agency.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed to allow UN aid to enter from Turkey via two more border crossings late on Monday, the world body said, in a move that could help get aid to those in northwest Syria.
It has so far received little help compared to government-held areas, leading to widespread anger among people living in the region who feel they have been left to fend for themselves.
REPATRIATION
The Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday said it is mulling the repatriation of Filipinos affected by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey.
DFA Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs Eduardo Jose de Vega said this as 64 of the 248 Filipinos affected by the earthquake are now sheltered at the Philippine Embassy in Ankara.
He said a possible snag in the process is that most of these Filipinos are married to Turkish nationals and have acquired Turkish citizenship.
De Vega also said the remains of one of the two Filipinas who died in the earthquake in Turkey will be repatriated to Manila “within this week.”
The Turkish husband of the other Filipina fatality decided to have her remains buried there.
The DFA has withheld the names of the Filipino fatalities as their respective families have requested privacy.
There are 4,006 Filipinos living and working in Turkey, mostly concentrated in Istanbul and the northwest part of the country.
In Syria, De Vega 60 Filipinos were affected and no fatality.
De Vega said the embassy is providing financial assistance to 70 Filipinos affected by the temblor aside from the 64 in Ankara.
The Philippine Embassy in Ankara said Juliva Benlingan, a Filipina earlier reported missing and later rescued, is recovering at a hospital there.
“As she recovers well at an Adana hospital, she thanks God for a second chance at life and the Embassy for their well-wishes,” the embassy said.
The embassy said they are also providing financial assistance to Benlingan.
The embassy also said its team in the Turkish city of Mersin is in contact with volunteers from the hospitality industry, who have offered to provide food assistance to Filipino-Turkish families who chose to remain in Antakya — one of the worst affected cities — and to the Philippine Humanitarian Contingent in Adiyaman province. — Reuters and Ashzel Hachero
