As rescuers in Turkey and Syria continue to search for survivors after Monday’s magnitude 7.8 quake, hopes of finding more people alive in the rubble three days after the disaster begin to fade as 15,000 deaths are confirmed.
As of Thursday morning, at least 12,391 people have died from the earthquake and its aftershocks in Turkey. The country’s disaster management agency said more than 60,000 people were injured and tens of thousands displaced. More than 2,900 people have been reported dead on the Syrian side of the border.
Emergency crews working overnight in the city of Antakya managed to get a girl trapped in the ruins of the building to safety, according to the IHA news agency via the Associated Press. Two hours later, they also rescued her father.
In Diyarbakir, a city roughly 300 miles east of Antakya, rescuers freed an injured woman from a collapsed building but found three others dead next to her, according to a report by the Turkish news agency DHA.
TURKEY EARTHQUAKE DEVASTATION CAPTURED ON VIDEO
Rescue teams search for people in a destroyed building, in Adiyaman, southeastern Turkey, Wednesday, February 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)
As the days go by, the window of survival for those trapped under the destruction is rapidly shrinking, but experts still insist it’s too soon to give up hope entirely.
“The first 72 hours are considered critical,” said Steven Godby, a natural hazards expert at Nottingham Trent University in England. “The average survival rate within 24 hours is 74%, after 72 hours it is 22% and on the fifth day it is 6%.”
Antakya resident Serap Arslan told the AP that many people, including her mother and brother, are still buried near a collapsed building. Machinery arrived at the area to move some of the heavy concrete on Wednesday.
“We tried to clear it on our own, but unfortunately we are very ill-equipped for the job,” the 45-year-old said.
Selen Ekimen, another Antakya resident, told the AP that both her parents and brother are buried.
“There hasn’t been any sound from them for days,” she said, wiping away her tears with her gloved hands. “None.”
People and rescue teams search for survivors in destroyed buildings in Elbistan, southern Turkey, Wednesday, February 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
EARTHQUAKES IN TURKEY AND SYRIA DRIVE UN TO ACTIVATE EMERGENCY SATELLITE MAPPING
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited Hatay province on Wednesday, a hard-hit area where residents criticized the government’s alleged slow response.
Erdogan, who is running for re-election in May, acknowledged problems with the response to the catastrophic earthquake, but said winter weather and the destruction of the Hatay airport runway by the quake had disrupted the response.
“It is not possible to be prepared for such a disaster. We will not leave any of our citizens unattended,” Erdogan said, adding that “disgraceful people” were spreading “lies and slander” about the government’s actions.
Erdogan also said the government would distribute 10,000 Turkish lira ($532) to the affected families.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and a survivor hug as he visits the city center destroyed by Monday’s earthquake in Kahramanmaras, southern Turkey, Wednesday, February 8, 2023. (Turkish Presidency via AP)
EARTHQUAKE IN TURKEY, SYRIA IS THE DEADLIEST IN MORE THAN A DECADE
As of Thursday morning, the country’s disaster management agency reported that more than 110,000 rescue personnel were taking part in the monumental recovery efforts. It also said that more than 5,500 vehicles had been shipped, including tractors, cranes, bulldozers and bulldozers.
More than two dozen countries have sent teams to help local emergency personnel, but the scale of destruction was so widespread that many people are still waiting for help.
According to the AP, aid efforts in Syria have been significantly affected by the ongoing civil war and the isolation of the rebel-held border region, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. Syria itself is also an international pariah under war-linked Western sanctions.
Rescue teams remove a victim from a destroyed building in Aleppo, Syria, Tuesday, February 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Omar Sanadiki)
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The death toll in Syria and Turkey is one of the highest in recent history, surpassing 8,800 in Nepal in 2015 from a magnitude 7.8 earthquake and nearly 20,000 in Japan after a tsunami triggered by an earthquake in 2011.
The region sits on major fault lines and is frequently rocked by earthquakes. Some 18,000 people died in equally powerful earthquakes that struck northwestern Turkey in 1999.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
