But there are also cases of almost miraculous rescue: On Wednesday, 52 hours after the 7.8 magnitude tremor, a woman was rescued alive from the rubble. Images from the NTV broadcaster showed how the emergency services in the Turkish province of Kahramanmaras brought the woman to the ambulance on a stretcher. She is 58 years old and was rescued from a collapsed hotel.
Aid teams rescued a four-month-old girl from under the rubble in Hatay, southern Turkey, after 58 hours. The helpers climbed into a gap between the collapsed house walls, wrapped the baby in a blanket and lifted it out, as the recordings showed. The little one whimpered. The rescuers tried to calm the infant. According to the DHA news agency, the search for the parents continues.
In Kahramanmaras, a one-year-old child was pulled alive from under the rubble with his pregnant mother after 56 hours, DHA reported. The girl’s face was white with dust. The father had been saved before.
And 60 hours after the quake, a woman was also freed from the rubble in Hatay province. After six hours of rescue work, the 75-year-old was rescued from a collapsed house, the online newspaper Gazete Duvar reported. The search for her husband, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, finally ended due to a lack of technical equipment.
Deadliest earthquake since 2012
Turkey’s death toll has risen to 9,057, according to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. More than 2,660 deaths have been reported in Syria so far. With a magnitude of 7.8 (according to other measurements 7.7), the quake shook the Turkish-Syrian border area on Monday night. Another 7.5 magnitude earthquake followed in the same area on Monday afternoon. Thousands of buildings collapsed. In Turkey, ten provinces with 13.5 million people were affected by the earthquake. It is the deadliest earthquake in the world in more than a decade. Experts and the WHO assume that the number of deaths will continue to rise. In 2012, the earthquake in Haiti killed 316,000 people.
Erdogan calls for unity
Erdogan called for unity – the affected area is inhabited mostly by Kurds. According to Erdogan, no one should listen to “provocateurs”, but only to the government’s official statements. He acknowledged problems with the supply of the disaster areas, but emphasized that these have now been resolved. “Of course there are deficits. You can see the conditions very clearly.” It is not possible “to be prepared for such an earthquake,” he added.
The population is now loudly criticizing the non-functioning rescue of missing people and the provision of the most necessary things in view of the freezing cold. Erdogan promised that the clean-up work and reconstruction should be accelerated.
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced it was sending a high-level delegation to coordinate aid in Turkey and Syria. The WHO has already warned of long-term “massive” consequences for health care in the crisis areas.
Pope Francis meanwhile called for donations: “I thank everyone who is sending aid and encourage everyone to show solidarity with these areas, some of which have already been ravaged by a long war,” said the Pope at a general audience in the Vatican.
Even two days after the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, people are still suspected to be under the rubble. For the emergency services, it is a race against time because the probability of rescuing people alive from the rubble decreases with each passing hour. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the Turkish disaster area and called for cooperation and unity.
Syria asks EU for help
The Syrian government in Damascus has meanwhile made an official request for help from the European Union. The help of individual EU states is coordinated by the EU civil protection mechanism. The country, which has been shaken by years of bloody civil war, is completely overwhelmed by the situation. A doctor in Aleppo said the situation was worse than at the height of the civil war.
Damascus, which has no access to parts of the affected areas, asked for medical equipment, medicines and food, among other things. The request for help shows the emergency: the EU has imposed sanctions against the regime of ruler Bashar al-Assad because of the civil war in Syria.
According to the UN, urgently needed aid supplies could be delivered from southern Turkey to the Syrian rebel areas for the first time on Thursday. There is a glimmer of hope that the road will be passable again.
El-Gawhary (ORF) on the situation in Syria
The ORF correspondent for the Arab region, Karim El-Gawhary, talks about the difficult circumstances in terms of support for the earthquake victims in Syria.
Around 23 million people affected
Two Austrians were among the fatalities, as the Foreign Ministry announced on Tuesday afternoon. There are currently no other missing persons. According to estimates by the Pacific Disaster Center, a US organization for disaster relief, a total of around 23 million people are affected.
According to experts, the number of deaths is likely to continue to rise. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) fears that thousands of children may be among them. The quake in Turkey was the strongest since a quake of similar magnitude in 1999 that killed more than 17,000 people. “It’s a race against time,” said World Health Organization (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Every minute, every hour, that passes diminishes the chances of finding anyone alive.”
Two days after the severe earthquakes in Turkey and Syria that killed more than 11,000 people, the extent of the catastrophe is becoming increasingly clear. The search for victims continued without interruption.
Disaster relief team from Austria in action
Turkey’s disaster agency AFAD said 60,000 search and rescue personnel had been deployed and more than 41,000 tents, 100,000 beds and 300,000 blankets had been sent to the region. More than two dozen search and rescue teams have already been mobilized through the EU Disaster Relief Centre.
Since Wednesday, 85 soldiers of the Austrian Forces Disaster Relief Unit (AFDRU) have been deployed in Turkey. On Wednesday, soldiers were able to rescue an injured person from the rubble. “He had to have an arm amputated,” said Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Kugelweis, who is currently in the disaster area. “The forces who are on site for the Austrian army in Turkey have just given me a direct report on the situation in the disaster areas. The situation is very serious, the soldiers are doing an impressive job,” wrote Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen on Twitter.
In addition to the armed forces, a team from Vorarlberg was sent to the area from Austria following a request from Turkey to the civil protection mechanism of the European Union. The 25 specialists are firefighters, four mountain rescue dog handlers with specially trained dogs and three emergency doctors.
Lower Austria’s FPÖ leader Udo Landbauer sharply criticized Austrian aid on Wednesday – three million euros had been announced. It is “incredible with what audacity green politicians in particular are always giving our tax money away to other countries”. SPÖ federal manager Christian Deutsch spoke of a “barbaric statement” when farmers describe aid for earthquake victims as a “million gift”. In the FPÖ, “all dams would obviously break”, so Deutsch, referring to recent xenophobic statements by the FPÖ district councilor Gottfried Waldhäusl to schoolchildren.
While the FPÖ politician dismisses humanitarian aid as “given away”, governments and aid organizations around the world are helping – and overcoming hostilities, at least temporarily: Greece is helping Turkey as well as Armenia. The EU is helping the regime in Syria, which it has imposed sanctions on because of the civil war.
