More than 16,000 people have now been confirmed dead after a catastrophic earthquake and a series of aftershocks hit Turkey and Syria.
Hopes of finding many more people alive more than three days after the incident were starting to fade although rescuers pulled more survivors from beneath the rubble of collapsed buildings on Thursday.
The World Health Organisation had warned that the death toll from a strong earthquake in south-eastern Turkey, near Syria’s border, could rise eight-fold.
The WHO’s senior emergency officer for Europe, Catherine Smallwood was quoted as saying, “We always see the same thing with earthquakes, unfortunately, which is that the initial reports of the numbers of people who have died or who have been injured will increase quite significantly in the week that follows,”.
Search for survivors continue
According to reports, emergency crews who worked through the night in the city of Antakya pulled a young girl, Hazal Guner, from the ruins of a building and also rescued her father, Soner Guner, two hours later. As they prepared the man to be loaded into an ambulance, rescue crews told him that his daughter was alive and they were taking him to the same field hospital for treatment.
“I love you all,” he faintly whispered to the rescue team.
More reports had it that In Diyarbakir, east of Antakya, rescuers freed an injured woman from a collapsed building in the early morning hours but found the three people next to her in the rubble dead.
Turkey’s disaster management agency said that more than 60,000 have been injured. This is in addition to 12,873 people killed in the country. On the Syrian side of the border, 3,162 have been reported dead and more than 5,000 injured.
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Thousands of people are reported to have lost their homes. In Antakya for instance, former residents of a collapsed building huddled around an outdoor fire overnight into Thursday, wrapping blankets tightly around themselves to try and stay warm.
According to Serap Arslan, many people remained under the rubble of the nearby building, including her mother and brother. She said machinery only started to move some of the heavy concrete on Wednesday.
“We tried to clear the debris on our own, but unfortunately our efforts have been insufficient,” the 45-year-old said.
Amid ongoing criticism that the government’s response has been too slow, Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scheduled to travel Thursday to the quake-hit provinces of Gaziantep, Osmaniye and Kilis.
Experts are quoted to have said that the survival window for those trapped under the rubble or otherwise unable to obtain basic necessities was closing rapidly. At the same time, they said it was too soon to abandon hope.
A victim being taken away
“The first 72 hours are considered to be critical,” said Steven Godby, a natural hazards expert at Nottingham Trent University in England. “The survival ratio on average within 24 hours is 74%, after 72 hours it is 22% and by the fifth day it is 6%.”
According to the disaster management agency, more than 110,000 rescue personnel were now taking part in the effort and more than 5,500 vehicles, including tractors, cranes, bulldozers and excavators had been shipped. The task is monumental, however, with thousands of buildings toppled by the earthquake.
Erdogan has since acknowledged problems with the emergency response to Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake. But he said that the winter weather had been a factor.
“It is not possible to be prepared for such a disaster,” Erdogan said when he visited the hard-hit province of Hatay on Wednesday. “We will not leave any of our citizens uncared for.” He also hit back at critics, saying “dishonourable people” were spreading “lies and slander” about the government’s actions.
Story was adapted from CNBC.
