Status: 02/14/2023 2:29 p.m
While hardly any people are rescued from the rubble, aid in Turkey is now concentrating on caring for the survivors. But cold, hygienic conditions and looting gangs become a danger.
Low temperatures, collapsed infrastructure, no living space: a good week after the earthquake disaster in Turkey, the local conditions are dramatic. More than 35,000 victims have now been recovered and the chance of finding any survivors is vanishingly small. As a result, many aid teams are ending their operations on site. Now it’s about caring for those who have lost everything but their lives.
As the Turkish government reports, efforts are being made to set up emergency shelters. Around 206,000 tents are said to have been set up, and around 1.2 million people are being accommodated in student dormitories. A total of around 400,000 survivors were taken away from the devastated areas where life is hardly possible anymore.
Hardly any chance of survivors
Numerous survivors are traumatized, and many families were separated by the earthquake. Vice President Fuat Oktay reported that so far 574 children have been rescued from the rubble without any surviving parents. Meanwhile, many parents are also looking for their missing children. According to UNICEF, a total of 4.6 million children lived in the provinces affected by the earthquake.
Those who remained have lost everything. They search for belongings in the rubble, but there are hardly any survivors left.
Image: REUTERS
As if by a miracle, a few people could still be rescued from the rubble, such as 18-year-old Muhammed Cafer Cetin, who was freed by the rescue workers after 199 hours with jubilation. Such rescues are becoming increasingly rare and often those rescued are so weak that they die as a result of exhaustion and their injuries.
In the badly devastated province of Hatay, relatives complain that the search for survivors only started a short time ago. Aid workers would not have arrived until days after the disaster, so valuable time was lost. Now they fear that the search will be halted altogether once the international media departs.
Critical hygiene conditions on site
With the prospect of finding survivors dwindling, many of the international rescue workers have begun their return journey. According to the United Nations, aid is now concentrating on local care. Shelter, food and especially psychological care are urgently needed.
The people in the destroyed cities are confronted with difficult conditions: many have to sleep outside without shelter in sub-zero temperatures. The water supply has collapsed, there is limited electricity and erratic cellphone service. In addition, the hygienic conditions are deteriorating rapidly, as there are largely no sanitary facilities. The Turkish Ministry of Health announced that water samples from dozens of places were contaminated with germs.
Looting and violence in the crisis area
While many of those who remained are trying to help each other in solidarity, there are also increasing reports of looting and violence in the disaster regions. There would be more tumultuous scenes, in places kidnappings are mentioned. As the newspaper “Hürriyet” reported, the Turkish police arrested gangs who traveled by truck to the earthquake areas to loot homes.
For President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the riots mean additional pressure. His government is already being criticized for not having built homes and infrastructure to earthquake-proof standards. The impression that the government is unable to get the tense situation under control is becoming more and more widespread among the population. Erdogan himself had announced rapid reconstruction. Within a year, all the rubble in the ten affected provinces should have been cleared and the houses rebuilt.