Turkey is reeling after a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 2,900 people and left hundreds more injured. More than 1,400 people in northern Syria are also believed to have been killed. The quake, which struck near the city of Gaziantep in southeast Turkey in the early hours of Monday morning, was felt as far away as Lebanon and Jordan, on the far side of the Mediterranean.
Another quake of 7.6 magnitude struck the nearby Kahramanmaraş region a few hours later at 13.27 local time (10.27 GMT), according to the Turkish Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD). The images and video emerging from Turkey, showing flattened buildings and piles of rubble, are devastating. Desperate rescue operations are underway across much of southern Turkey, but survivors say that help in many areas has still not arrived – hours after the earthquake struck. Many of the victims are already desperately poor: 8.3 million people live in the south-east Anatolian region, a number swollen by at least a million refugees from the war in Syria, just across the border.
‘People in my hometown are digging neighbours out from the rubble with their own hands’
Almost 3,000 buildings collapsed, according to the latest announcement by Turkish president Erdoğan.
‘I woke up suddenly as the television fell on the floor,’ said Meral Kaya, a teacher in Şanlıurfa. ‘The whole building was swaying. I ran to fetch my children and my elderly parents. We had to hurry down the stairs all the way from the 13th floor. Several of the walls in the building cracked. We are waiting in the car. It’s really cold outside and we can’t drive anywhere because of the rain and fog.’
Heavy snowfall in much of Turkey is hampering relief efforts, as locals and emergency services searching for hundreds thought to be trapped under rubble.
‘It lasted for more than a minute,’ Mustafa Işık, a teacher in Diyarbakır said. ‘We heard some explosions and the electricity went out. We can still feel some aftershocks but we had to go back inside the house because of the cold’..
Many countries, including Britain, Germany, France, India, Israel and Russia, offered help. EU High Representative, Josep Borrell, announced that search and rescue teams from ten member states have been mobilised.
Local residents reached by phone in Turkey’s Hatay province spoke of chaos and said there was no sign yet of a coordinated rescue effort. ‘A lot of buildings collapsed in the neighbourhood, but no help has arrived,’ Özlem from Hatay said.
‘The situation is dire in the region,’ Suzan Şahin, an MP from Hatay said on local TV. ‘Not a single person from AFAD (the main Turkish relief agency) has arrived yet. Almost seven hours have passed.’
The only runway at the regional airport was also damaged, making it impossible for flights to land and take off.
‘People in my hometown are digging their neighbours out from the rubble with their own hands,’ said Vecih Cüzdan, who decided to drive from Istanbul to Hatay, which borders Syria on the Mediterranean coast, with his brother to help their relatives. They still could not reach some of their family members.
‘We have been expecting a major earthquake in the south-east Anatolia region for five years,’ Dr Savaş Karabulut, a geophysicist said. ‘200-300 km of the East Anatolian fault appears to have been ruptured. In practical terms, that means the death toll will be in the thousands, maybe even tens of thousands. Further earthquakes in the region are also to be expected.’
The last earthquake of such magnitude hit the country was in December 1939 when at least 39,000 people are known to have died in northeast Turkey. The country is criss-crossed by two seismic fault lines, known as the Eastern Anatolian and North Anatolian. In August 1999, 17,000 were killed in an earthquake with an epicentre near Izmit in western Turkey. For now, the death toll from this morning’s earthquake is much lower. But what seems certain given the scenes of destruction is that this grim tally is likely to rise considerably.
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