ALEPPO, Syria – The phase of the rescue after the major earthquake struck Turkey and Syria a week ago is “coming to a close” with urgency now switching to shelter, food, schooling and psychosocial care, the United Nations aid chief said during a visit to Syria on Monday.
“What is the most striking here, is even in Aleppo, which has suffered so much these many years, this moment … was about the worst that these people have experienced,” Martin Griffiths said from the government-held northwestern Syrian city of Aleppo that was a major front line in the Syrian civil war.
With hopes of finding many more survivors in the rubble fast fading, the combined official death toll in Turkey and Syria from last Monday’s 7.8 magnitude quake rose to nearly 36,000 and looked set to keep increasing.
The death toll in Syria jumped on Monday. The United Nations said more than 4,300 had been reported killed in the northwest, and more than 7,600 injured. The death toll in Syrian government stands at 1,414.
The February 6 earthquake struck a swathe of northwest Syria, a region partitioned by the 11-year-long war, including insurgent-held territory at the Turkish border and government areas controlled by President Bashar al-Assad.
Griffiths said the United Nations would have aid moving from government-held regions to the rebel-held northwest, a front line across which aid has seldom passed during the conflict.
Aid appeals would be issued for all the regions hit by the disaster, he added.
“We’ll have assistance moving from here into the northwest but the northwest is only one part of Syria … it’s also very important that we take care of the people here,” Griffiths said.
Griffiths said he had heard traumatic accounts of the disaster from survivors in Aleppo.
“People who lost their children, some of whom escaped, others stayed in the building. The trauma of the people we spoke to was visible and this is a trauma which the world needs to heal,” he said.
FAMILY RESCUED
Rescuers in Turkey pulled out several people alive from collapsed buildings on Monday and were digging to reach a grandmother, mother and daughter from a single family, a week after the country’s worst earthquake in modern history.
Some 176 hours after the first earthquake, a woman named Serap Donmez on Monday was pulled out alive from a collapsed apartment block in Antakya by search and rescue teams from Turkey and Oman, state broadcaster TRT reported.
Another woman was rescued in southern Gaziantep province a few hours earlier, CNN Turk reported. A 35-year-old was rescued from the rubble of a building in Adiyaman city, officials said.
Rescue workers in Kahramanmaras said they had contact with a grandmother, mother and baby trapped in one room in a three-storey building, with a fourth person possibly in another room. They said they were trying to break a wall to reach the survivors but a column was delaying them.
Members of a Spanish rescue team, Turkish army and police search crews were working at the building, which remained largely intact.
“We don’t know whether they are alive. We just saw heat with the thermal cameras, but they haven’t made any sound,” a soldier with the Turkish army told Reuters.
The deadliest quake in Turkey since 1939 has killed 31,643 people there, Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said. More than 4,300 people were reported dead and 7,600 injured in northwest Syria as of Sunday, said a UN agency.
The quake is now the sixth most deadly natural disaster this century, behind the 2005 tremor that killed at least 73,000 in Pakistan.
SYRIA AID
In Syria, the disaster hit hardest in the rebel-held northwest, leaving homeless yet again many people who had already been displaced several times by a decade-old civil war. The region has received little aid compared with government-held areas.
There is currently only a single crossing open on the Turkey-Syria border for UN aid supplies. Griffiths said that the UN would have aid moving from government-held regions in Syria to the rebel-held northwest.
The United States called on the Syrian government and all other parties to immediately grant humanitarian access to all those in need.
Earthquake aid from government-held regions into territory controlled by hardline opposition groups has been held up by approval issues with Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which controls much of the region, a UN spokesperson said.
An HTS source in Idlib told Reuters the group would not allow any shipments from government-held areas and that aid would be coming in from Turkey to the north.
The United Nations has said it is hoping to open an additional two border points.
SECURITY CONCERNS
Residents and aid workers from several Turkish cities have cited worsening security conditions, with widespread accounts of businesses and collapsed homes being robbed.
In a central district of one of the worst hit cities, Antakya in southern Turkey, business owners emptied their shops on Sunday to prevent merchandise from being stolen by looters.
Amid concerns about hygiene and the spread of infection in the region, Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said at the weekend that rabies and tetanus vaccine had been sent to the quake zone and that mobile pharmacies had started to operate there.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has said the government will deal firmly with looters, as he faces questions over his response to the earthquake ahead of an election scheduled for June that is expected to be the toughest of his two decades in power.
Turkey said on Sunday about 80,000 people were in hospital, and more than 1 million in temporary shelters.
PH HELP
The Philippines will not send additional medical and search workers to Turkey, said Bernardo Rafaelito Alejandro IV, spokesman of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC).
Asked why, Alejandro said, “They said it’s because (the opportunity) for life-saving has already lapsed. We may not be able to find many survivors.”
Alejandro said the Philippines can continue to send non-food items to Turkey.
An 82-man team from the Armed Forces, Department of Health, Metropolitan Development Authority, Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority and Office of Civil Defense arrived in Turkey on Thursday last week and is deployed in Adiyaman City.
The team, headed by Maj. Erwin Diploma, has searched about 20 buildings and provided medical care to some 55 patients.
“We will continue to perform our tasks safely and hopefully we will find live victims. We are helping local responders on the ground,” said Diploma.
Dr. Alfonso Danac, head of the contingent’s medical cluster, said the major challenge they are facing is the “extreme weather condition.”
“It’s not only our movement which is limited (by the extreme weather condition), our battery packs are also draining fast,” said Danac.
“Second (challenge) is language barrier. Not all the people here know how to speak English. It’s fortunate we have interpreters, volunteers who are helping us deal with the patients,” he added.
Ranny Magno, head of the contingent’s urban search and rescue cluster, said: “We are on high morale despite the cold weather… There is nothing to worry about,” he said.
President Marcos Jr. said the team sent to Turkey has provided significant assistance to those affected, including setting up a hospital, and the Philippines is now looking at how it can send help to Syria.
The Catholic Church in the Philippines will hold second collections in its Sunday Masses on February 19 to raise funds for the quake victims.
“We would like to prompt and inspire generosity from you to support our Alay Kapwa Solidarity Appeal for Caritas Turkey and Caritas Syria,” said Caritas Philippines president Bishop Jose Colin Bagaforo. — Reuters, Victor Reyes, Jocelyn Montemayor and Gerard Naval
