SEven three days after the catastrophic earthquake in the Turkish-Syrian border area, emergency services rescued more survivors from the rubble. On Thursday night, about 68 hours after the tremors, a baby was rescued from a collapsed building in Hatay province, state broadcaster TRT World reported. A few hours later, a man was found alive under the rubble of the same house, who is believed to be the child’s father.
In the center of the city of Gaziantep, three other people were rescued from the rubble of a ruined house in the morning. Cheers broke out among the helpers, many had tears of joy in their eyes. “We hope for more miracles,” said a reporter.
Time is running out for survivors under rubble
During the night, the rough orientation mark of 72 hours was exceeded, after which the chances of survival of buried people are estimated to be extremely low. But many rescuers and relatives do not want to give up the last glimmer of hope. “Survivors trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Turkey and Syria are running out of time,” TRT World said.
Temperatures well below freezing also reduce the chances of further success stories. So far, despite the difficult conditions, the rescuers in Turkey have managed to rescue around 8,000 people alive since the earthquake three days ago, the broadcaster reported.
The earthquake, with a magnitude of 7.7 to 7.8, shook the border area between Syria and Turkey early Monday morning and caused enormous devastation. Another 7.5 magnitude earthquake followed in the same area on Monday afternoon. The number of dead in both countries has now risen to more than 15,000, and tens of thousands have been injured.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised financial support to those affected and at the same time acknowledged difficulties in rescue operations. During his visit to the southern province of Hatay, Erdogan said: “Of course there are deficits. You can see the conditions quite clearly.” At the same time, he defended police officers and soldiers from the criticism that arose after the earthquake. These are “honorable.” Anyone who claims that there are no soldiers and police officers on site is “dishonorable and dishonest,” said the Turkish head of state.
His government will not allow the emergency services to be talked about in this way. More than 21,000 helpers are deployed in Hatay province, including soldiers and police officers. During a visit to Kahramanmaras, the Turkish President promised the affected families 10,000 Turkish lira (around 500 euros) in emergency aid. “Of course there were some problems on the first day, but on the second day and today the situation was managed.”
Previously, there had been strong criticism from the population that they were being abandoned by the authorities during the salvage work. Reporters from the AFP news agency saw people bare-handed searching for relatives in the rubble and spoke to angry residents who had waited in vain for promised tents, food and equipment.
Many people in the affected regions also complained bitterly about the Turkish government’s disaster management on the Internet. But at the time of Erdogan’s visit to the earthquake regions, the short message service Twitter was largely unavailable. Users in Turkey and network traffic observatory netblocks.org reported that access to Twitter was restricted by several ISPs.