Rescue efforts in Turkey and Syria continue as death toll passes 6,200

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Rescue efforts in Turkey and Syria continue as death toll passes 6,200

A frantic race is underway to find more survivors and help the injured as the death toll from the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday passed 6,200.

Turkey's disaster management agency said more than 24,400 emergency personnel were now on the ground, while teams of rescue workers from nearly 30 countries have been sent to Turkey or Syria.

However, officials have warned that more is needed to help search the vast area affected by Monday's earthquake.

As promises of help flooded in, Turkey said it would only allow vehicles carrying aid to enter the worst-hit provinces of Kahramanmaras, Adiyaman and Hatay in order to speed the effort.

Footballer Christian Atsu reportedly pulled from earthquake rubble in Turkey
'We are scared we lost them': UK's Turkish community worried after earthquakes

The United Nations (UN) said it was "exploring all avenues" to get supplies to rebel-held northwestern Syria, where millions live in extreme poverty and rely on humanitarian aid to survive.

Attempts to reach survivors overnight on Monday were impeded by below freezing temperatures and close to 200 aftershocks. Authorities fear the death toll will keep climbing.

Nurgul Atay said she could hear her mother’s voice beneath the rubble of a collapsed building in the Turkish city of Antakya, the capital of Hatay province, but that her and others’ efforts to get into the ruins had been futile without any heavy equipment to help.

“If only we could lift the concrete slab we’d be able to reach her,” she said. “My mother is 70-years-old, she won’t be able to withstand this for long.”

In northwest Syria, a woman gave birth to a baby girl while buried underneath the ruins of a five-story apartment building, relatives and a doctor said.
Rescuers discovered the crying infant and took it to a children’s hospital in the town of Afrin, in Aleppo province, where she is now receiving treatment. Her mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya, did not survive.

Meanwhile, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said three British nationals are among the thousands feared missing.

Making a statement in the Commons, Mr Cleverly said: "As of this morning, we know that three British nationals are missing and the Foreign Office’s Crisis Response Hub is working to support the at least 35 British nationals who have been directly affected by these earthquakes.

"We assess that the likelihood of large-scale British casualties remains low."

Such is the devastation, one student living in north-east England told ITV News that 16 of his relatives had died in the earthquakes.

The tremors from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake, which was centred about 60 miles from the Syrian border, just north of the city of Gaziantep, were felt as far away as Cairo in Egypt.

Less than ten hours later, at about 1.30pm local time, a new, 7.5 magnitude earthquake hit around 80 miles from the first epicentre.

Thousands of buildings were reported collapsed in a wide area extending from Syria’s cities of Aleppo and Hama to Turkey’s Diyarbakir, more than 200 miles to the northeast - roughly as far apart as the distance between Manchester and London.

The quake affected rebel-held areas of Syria, already devastated by an 11-year civil war, which are home to millions of displaced people living in decrepit conditions.

Syria's hospitals have been "overwhelmed with patients filling the hallways", according to the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS).

Mosques around northwest Syria were opened up as shelters for people unable to return to damaged homes amid freezing temperatures.

The region has been under siege for years, enduring frequent Russian and government airstrikes, and depends on aid from nearby Turkey for everything from food to medical supplies.

In fact, on Tuesday UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly criticised the Syrian regime for the “completely unacceptable bombing” of an opposition-held area in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake.

“Sadly it speaks to a long-standing pattern of behaviour by the Assad regime, a regime that we condemn," he said.

Raed Salah, the head of the White Helmets, the emergency organisation in Syria's opposition areas, said whole neighbourhoods collapsed in some areas.

Elsewhere, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said 13 million of his country's 85 million strong population were affected in some way, declaring a state of emergency in ten provinces in order to manage the response. Mr Erdogan also imposed seven days of national mourning.

More than 8,000 people have so far been pulled from the debris in Turkey alone, and some 380,000 have taken refuge in government shelters or hotels, according to the country's Vice President, Fuat Oktay.

Turkey has large numbers of troops in the border region with Syria and has tasked its military to aid in the rescue efforts, including setting up tents for the homeless and a field hospital in Hatay province.

Defence Minister, Hulusi Akar, said a humanitarian aid brigade based in Ankara and eight military search and rescue teams had also been deployed.

At least 20 aftershocks were reported as hampering search and rescue efforts and causing the collapse of already damaged buildings, while a famous second-century historic castle, in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, was badly damaged.

It's a grim statistic that the original URL has the much lower initial estimate.

[Highlord Laan]

Deaths are at 20,000+ now, and the worthless wannabe sultan is more concerned about the next election cycle. The little shit needs to eat a bullet, because even a halfassed junta would be an improvement at this point.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Turkey-Syria earthquakes: 16 babies pulled from rubble flown to safety on presidential plane

Turkey's youngest earthquake survivors have been flown to safety in President Erdogan's private plane.

The youngsters, who are all under the age of one, were pulled from the rubble in the city of Kahramanmaraş and have been flown to Ankara.

According to a tweet from Derya Yanık, Turkey's Family and Social Services Minister, the whereabouts of the children's parents is unknown but all of them appear in good health.

She went on to say the children would be checked over by doctors once in Ankara and would then be taken into care.

President Erdoğan's wife Emime has also been tweeting about the rescue and says she will be following the babies' progress.

Turkish news channels are reporting 79 rescued children are currently without their families.

In an effort to reunite them with their loved ones - if old enough - they will be interviewed and their details will be uploaded to a government portal.

The children will be given a coloured wristband, depending on which city they were rescued from.

Due to kidnapping fears - families will need to provide evidence such as birth certificates and photographs to take their children home.

Facial scans and other tests will be carried out before agreeing to hand over children, according to Turkish news outlets.

The babies' airlift comes as President Erdoğan is receiving ongoing criticism that the Turkish Government’s response to the disaster has been too slow.

The president has hit back, saying "dishonourable people" were spreading “lies and slander” about the government's actions.

Erdogen is scheduled to travel to some of the worst-hit provinces - Gaziantep, Osmaniye and Kilis amid ongoing criticism on Thursday.

[LadyTevar]

They may need to go for DNA testing to track any relatives of those children. We have no way of knowing if any of their parents are alive.

Last count, 23000+ dead between Turkey and Syria.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

It's now 33,000 between both countries, a lot of Syrian refugees in Turkey are among the dead there.

[madd0c0t0r2]

Fucking hell.

[wautd]

The sad thing is, is that so many deaths could have been avoided if those buildings were built according to legal regulations. They know they are building on a fault line with a history of earthquakes, so building on the cheap instead of building buildings that can witstand earthquakes of this magnitude is criminal negligence.
I wonder if Erdogon's family or buddies had a hand in these fraudulent building companies (there is the fact that his government gave amnesty to thousands of illegally built buildings in the past)

[madd0c0t0r2]

The sad thing is, is that so many deaths could have been avoided if those buildings were built according to legal regulations. They know they are building on a fault line with a history of earthquakes, so building on the cheap instead of building buildings that can witstand earthquakes of this magnitude is criminal negligence.
I wonder if Erdogon's family or buddies had a hand in these fraudulent building companies (there is the fact that his government gave amnesty to thousands of illegally built buildings in the past)

https://parametric-architecture.com/con ... n-turkiye/

Justice Minister of Turkiye decided to establish Earthquake Crimes Investigation Offices on February 11, six days after the disaster, in the provinces affected by the earthquakes in Kahramanmaraş. Many prosecutors were assigned to the earthquake area and investigations into the contractors of demolished and damaged structures continue.

“We will follow this up meticulously until the necessary judicial process is concluded, especially for buildings that suffered heavy damage and buildings that caused deaths and injuries,” he said...

With elections approaching, the president’s future is in danger after 20 years in power. Mr. Erdogan said to words to an earthquake survivor in Pazarcık, “Such things have always happened,” added, “It’s part of destiny’s plan.” But on the other hand, University College London professor David Alexander said that the earthquake was “not necessarily [large] enough to bring well-constructed buildings down”.

Turkiye Minister of Justice, Bekir Bozdağ, announced on February 12 that 134 suspects (a few of them are contractors of collapsed buildings) have been prosecuted so far within the scope of the investigations, and already three people have been arrested. One of them was a 12-story complex built a decade ago in Antakya by contractor Mehmet Yasar Coskun, who was detained at Istanbul airport before boarding a flight for Montenegro and has since been arrested. But also, the contractor told prosecutors he did not know why it had collapsed, Reuters reported.

“We fulfilled all procedures set out in legislation,” Coskun told local news agency company Anadolu Ajans. “All licenses were obtained.”

Since the disaster has just occurred, detentions continue rapidly. But with that comes other questions we need to ask. In disasters such as earthquakes, is only the contractors guilty? Isn’t this the common fault of architects, planners, civil engineers, and the state that approves illegal structures? I hope that this will be discussed more in Turkey and around the world in the future.

[LadyTevar]

Erdogan eased building codes

Resurfaced videos from 2019 shows Turkish president bragging about builders skirting earthquake construction codes in areas now turned to rubble

Resurfaced videos from 2019 show Turkey's president boasting about granting amnesty for buildings that didn't meet earthquake construction codes, according to local media.

The videos of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are circulating widely in Turkey as the death toll from this month's devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake surpassed 33,000 people.

Erdoğan is seen in the videos speaking on the campaign trail in 2019, boasting of having removed building standards-related headaches for hundreds of thousands of citizens with his amnesty policy.

One stop was in Kahramanmaraş, the recent earthquake's epicenter. There, in 2019, he said: "We have solved the problems of 144,556 Kahramanmaraş citizens with the amnesty," according to local outlet Duvar English.

Erdoğan made similar boasts in campaign stops in the cities of Hatay and Malatya, both also now ravaged by the earthquake, Duvar reported.

In Hatay, he said: "We have solved the problems of 205,000 citizens of Hatay with zoning peace," per a translation by NPR.

Zoning peace is another name for the Turkish amnesty policy which, on payment of a fine, gives retroactive permits to structures built without planning permission, or not up to code. Those standards include fire protection and seismic standards, per Duvar.

The most recent iteration of the policy came in 2018, under Erdoğan's presidency.

The office of the presidency of Turkey did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Before-and-after footage of Hatay, distributed by Reuters, shows the impact of the devastation, though it is unclear whether the buildings pictured are among those granted amnesty.

Erdoğan has previously acknowledged the role of building standards in the scale of earthquake disasters, tweeting in 2013 that "buildings kill, not earthquakes," per NPR's translation.

Estimates vary as to how many buildings in the earthquake zone had taken advantage of the amnesty policy.

The BBC quoted Pelin Pınar Giritlioğlu, head of Istanbul's branch of the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects, as saying that between 70-75,000 buildings in the earthquake zone had benefited from the policy.

Meanwhile, Duvar cited Buğra Gökçe, the deputy secretary general of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, as saying that 294,165 buildings in the affected areas had taken advantage of it.

It remains unclear if many of the buildings would have collapsed anyway.

Nonetheless, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu placed the blame squarely with the president, saying, per NPR: "If there is one person responsible for this, it is Erdoğan."

[madd0c0t0r2]

Without wanting to let the corrupt bastards off, it is worth noting it was a BIG quake

https://imgur.com/gallery/qWR7U3A

That image shows the actual earthquake response spectra (grey) Vs the dd2 design limit spectra (red).

Dd2 is 10% chance exceedance in 50ur of building life. I'm not sure how the Turkish standards do it, but the eurocdes set a life and a allowed limit for different cases - eg a hospital may be 50ur building life but 1% limit, while a bridge may be 100 yr life but 10% exceedance limit....

Cold comfort if your house was taken out by someone else's collapsing mid quake.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Do you mean it's the percentage chance their design limits would be exceeded for the useful life of the building?

The ITV coverage pointed out the perfect illustration is by how the architects and engineers building is still standing while the surrounding structures have been flattened.

[bobalot]

There is also this:

The city that didn't collapse: How Erzin became a haven from Turkey's earthquake

Residents and officials say Erzin suffered no deaths and saw no buildings collapse, and they credit a long-standing policy not to allow construction that violated the country’s codes.

By Kristina Jovanovski
ERZIN, Turkey — Death and destruction surround Erzin.

But this tiny city in Turkey’s southern Hatay province is an oasis of safety and normality while life throughout the region has been overturned by last week’s earthquake.

Residents and officials say Erzin suffered no deaths and saw no buildings collapse in the powerful temblor, and they credit a long-standing determination not to allow construction that violated the country’s codes.

Beyaz Yalcin was one of the lucky ones.

She was in Erzin with her four young children when the quake struck, rather than at home in nearby Gaziantep.

Yalcin, 33, has not returned home. She doesn’t know if her house is still standing or if, like so many in Gaziantep and throughout the region, it has been reduced to rubble.

“I am in shock. I don’t want to face the same situation again,” she said.

Yalcin is not the only one staying in this town out of fear.

Emre Tibikoglu, 39, who has been working for the municipality for six years, said he believed 20,000 people had flocked to Erzin since the earthquake, about a 50% increase in the town’s population.

“We know we are in an earthquake area,” he said, citing the insistence of the current mayor and previous ones not to allow buildings that failed to meet construction codes to be put up.

Tibikoglu said that whenever officials realized there were buildings that had been illegally built, they would get them taken down.

“Some local people were really mad about it,” he said of the residents living in those buildings. But he said the mayor held firm, knowing that a major earthquake could come one day.

Tibikoglu said he was not sure why other municipalities did not do the same, but suspected there could have been connections between local politicians and contractors, and said more stringent government regulations could have limited such a large-scale tragedy.

He said there are also no high-rise buildings in Erzin, decreasing the risks, though he said that he had heard some buildings in the town were damaged to the point that it was unsafe for people to remain there. The town may have escaped the devastation of the neighboring areas, but the 7.8-magnitude quake was felt nonetheless.

Engineers in Turkey had been raising fears over poorly constructed buildings for years, given the country’s vulnerability to huge earthquakes. Concerns only grew after a 2018 law provided amnesty for buildings with illegal construction, allowing them to be used as long as the owners paid a fine to the state.

The government has vowed a thorough investigation and ordered the detention of more than 100 people over collapsed buildings, though opposition groups have accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of failing to ensure that regulations were properly enforced while anger has grown over the issue.

Erzin is about 70 miles or so from the quake's epicenter.

In cities farther from the center, as well as those close by like Osmaniye, just 12 miles away from Erzin, homes have been reduced to rubble and those who survived are still struggling to get aid.

Some have left for Erzin, seeking shelter with relatives.

Mountains and hills surround Erzin, something that locals believe has protected them.

But signs of the earthquake are there, on the damaged minarets and the debris scattered across the floor of the bus station, which has been cordoned off.

Life has otherwise largely gone on for residents, with locals dining in restaurants and shops remaining open, while police in the center of town are focused on directing traffic at the roundabout rather than in search-and-rescue operations.

With its roads intact and given its proximity to more gravely affected areas, Erzin has become a collection point for donations, such as food and clothing, according to Tibikoglu, who was overseeing efforts at one donation center this week.

The city is also providing relief to the new arrivals who have come with little.

In one storage room, bags full of bread lay on shelves, while outside the gate of the building, a crowd lined up waiting for aid.

In the parking lot, Yalcin rifled through cardboard boxes of clothes with women’s shoes lined up next to them.

She said her family had come to Erzin, where they have relatives, for a wedding before the quake happened. Though physically unscathed, she said, it had woken her children and left them scared — as well as lacking warm clothes and reliable shelter.

Her youngest child, 5-year-old Yahit, was standing in the cold wearing slippers and no socks, a green jacket and pants with a hole in them, while his siblings waited back in their temporary home with relatives.

Yalcin said she was sure there would be socks there for him but that she was also looking for blankets. Her top concern, though, was finding safe housing — perhaps a tent, since the building they were staying in had been damaged and she did not feel it was safe.

“We don’t have anything,” she said

Closer to the center of the town, Sultan Ergen sat with her husband and her sister on her mother’s porch.

They do not normally live together, but the siblings fled to their mother’s home in Erzin for safety after the quake. Ergen made the journey from Osmaniye along with her two children and her husband last Monday.

She said she knew the town was safer because it had also suffered less impact in previous, smaller earthquakes in the area, which is close to one of Turkey’s fault lines.

Ergen’s mother said that people in the town remained indoors after the quake because they trusted the construction of their homes.

“We don’t have a plan right now,” said Ergen, explaining that her family may never return to their home in Osmaniye. Her cousin was one of the many people killed in a luxury building in nearby Antakya, she said, one of the most high-profile sites to collapse.

As the fallout stokes recriminations across the country, families such as Ergen’s and Yalcin’s were navigating their temporary new lives in the town that was still standing.

“We don’t know how long we’re going to stay,” Ergen said. “Our building is really damaged.”

Source

Turns out if you actually enforce building regulations, you have far better outcomes.

[LadyTevar]

There is also this:

Source

Turns out if you actually enforce building regulations, you have far better outcomes.

Gee, funny how that works out.
I wonder how far they'll get trying to prosecute the construction companies. Right now, it looks like they can just say "We paid the Fine, we were allowed to go ahead! Erdogan let us!"

I really don't see Erdogan getting punished either.

[Solauren]

There is also this:

Source

Turns out if you actually enforce building regulations, you have far better outcomes.

Gee, funny how that works out.
I wonder how far they'll get trying to prosecute the construction companies. Right now, it looks like they can just say "We paid the Fine, we were allowed to go ahead! Erdogan let us!"

I really don't see Erdogan getting punished either.

Reply - you still didn't correct the problem, therefore you're in MORE trouble.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Turkey-Syria earthquake ripped huge chasm in what was once an olive field near Antakya

After more than a week of covering the dreadful human effects of the earthquake in Turkey we decided it was time to see what impact the magnitude 7.8 had made on the earth itself.

We had heard of a rupture in the ground near the village of Tepehan in Turkey’s south-east Hatay province. The village is unremarkable; narrow streets with a few small shops and a mosque in the centre. Winding down the windows we asked a group of local men if they could point us in the direction of the crack in the ground.

As we rounded the bend we couldn’t believe our eyes. The land just seemed to end in a dramatic precipice, although it’s not until you see it from directly above that you can truly marvel at its scale.

What had been an olive orchard, practically identical to all the others in the agricultural land just outside the city of Antakya, had been ripped in two by the sheer power of the earthquake early last Monday morning.

The tear in the earth is almost 1,000 feet long, at places wider than a football pitch and you could even fit a 13-storey building into it without skirting the top. You can see olive trees which have fallen to the bottom of the rift and around the edges tens of thousands of years of geological history etched in the different shades of the rock.

Drone footage shows the extent of the tear in the earth created by the force of the quake

We met some local boys from the village who were peering over the edge of the crumbly new cliff. They described an almighty noise and light show that night, it scared them all so much that one boy told us they couldn’t even eat for two days afterwards.

Clearly still in shock looking at what is the world’s newest valley, the youngest of the boys pointed at the chasm and with a gentle shrug told us "I used to ride my motorbike across here, it was just a flat field".

As the towns and cities affected by this appalling natural disaster start the long process of clearing the rubble and remembering their dead, this corner of rural Turkey will keep a permanent and very visible scar.

[LadyTevar]

Light show?

I wonder what caused the Light Show?

[Zaune]

Light show?

I wonder what caused the Light Show?

They're probably talking about "earthquake lights", so nobody really knows for certain.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Turkey ends earthquake rescue efforts in nine of 11 provinces

Rescue work has ended in nine of the 11 Turkish provinces hit by a devastating earthquake a fortnight ago.

Yunus Sezer, head of the country’s disaster agency AFAD, said operations are only ongoing in Kahramanmaras, the site of the epicentre, and Hatay, one of the hardest-hit provinces.

“We continue these efforts every day with the hope of reaching a living brother or sister,” he added.

While rescue operations continue in the two provinces, there have been no signs of anyone being dug from the rubble alive since three members of one family - a mother, father and 12-year-old boy - were extracted from a collapsed building in Hatay on Saturday. The boy later died.

The combined death toll in Turkey and Syria is now 44,377. The UN has said the full scope of the deaths in Syria may take time to determine.

On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken took a helicopter tour of southern Turkey and pledged a further $100 million (£83 million) in aid to help the region.

“This is going to be a long-term effort,” Mr Blinken said at Incirlik Air Base, a joint US-Turkish facility that has coordinated the distribution of disaster aid.

“The search and rescue, unfortunately, is coming to an end. The recovery is on, and then there will be a massive rebuilding operation.”
President Joe Biden announced $85 million (£70 million) for Turkey and Syria days after the earthquake. The US has also sent a search and rescue team, medical supplies and equipment.