Earthquake in Turkey
Wissler at Hart but Fair: “One is so helpless”
By Marko Schlichting
2/6/2023 11:53 p.m
A 7.5 magnitude earthquake has turned the Turkish-Syrian border region into a disaster region. On Monday evening, in a special edition of Hart but fair in the first, the guests talked about how people in the region can now be helped.
Night in Adana. It’s pouring rain. The temperature is five degrees. In the city, the mountains of rubble piled up meters high after the earthquake on Monday night. People cannot go into their houses, which could collapse. threaten aftershocks. The ground in Adana had already shook dozens of times on Monday. It is the most severe earthquake since August 1999, when more than 17,100 people died in northwestern Turkey in an industrial area around the city of Izmit. It is not yet known how many there are in the Turkish-Syrian border area.
In the evening, the ARD talk show “Hart aber fair” dealt with the situation in the earthquake area.
“It was messy”
The co-chair of the left Janine Wissler is in the earthquake region on Monday morning. She wants to observe a political trial. At 4.15 am she was woken up in her hotel because the floor was shaking. “I then went out onto the street and saw the destruction there. It was chaotic. I hardly noticed any emergency vehicles. People tried with their bare hands to rescue others from the rubble. There are often ten-storey houses here, and people were in the sleep surprised,” reports Wissler. She then decided to fly to Ankara. The airport in Diyarbakır was not destroyed, she got a plane there. “You feel so helpless,” she tells Hart but fairly. “The ground is shaking and you can’t run. You don’t know where to go. It’s absolutely scary.”
The area where Wissler was belongs to the Turkish part of Kurdistan. She reports that the cities there are being neglected by the government in Ankara. It is even worse in the affected area of Syria. It is bitterly cold there, the people have to live under the open sky, at night, in sub-zero temperatures, in the snow. “That’s why international help is urgently needed,” said the left-wing politician.
“We will help”
Federal Minister of Agriculture Cem Özdemir knows that too. He praises Greece’s quick help. Turkish President Erdogan asked for quick help. “That shows the drama of the situation and the extent of the disaster,” says Özdemir. Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser is currently coordinating the federal aid measures. “Now is the time to help, and we will help,” promises the minister.
On Tuesday, the Technical Relief Agency will send employees to the disaster region, says its President Gerd Friedsam. There is still time to free people alive from the rubble. Depending on the injury and how they are buried, people in this situation could survive 72 hours. But he has also rescued people who had been trapped under rubble for five days.
The CDU member of the Bundestag Serap Güler has relatives in Turkey. She knows what the people in the earthquake area need most urgently: “In the next few days it will depend on blankets, tents, food and medicine,” she says to Hart, but fairly.
The “RTL Foundation: We help children” is also involved in the relief measures in the crisis area. You can help with a donation of 10 euros by sending an SMS with the keyword earthquake to the number 4 48 44.