The grim task of recovering bodies from the wreckage of thousands of buildings destroyed in Turkey and Syria by a devastating earthquake that killed almost 9,000 people was occasionally punctuated by the joy of discovering a survivor as thinly stretched rescue teams labored through the night into Wednesday.
As additional victims were found, the disaster management organization in Turkey said that the death toll across the nation had increased to 6,234. 8,704 people were killed in all, according to official accounts from Syria and the White Helmets, a volunteer group that works in rebel-held areas of the country. Many more people lost their homes and tens of thousands more people were hurt.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was scheduled to visit the epicenter of the earthquake, Pazarcik, as well as the worst-hit province, Hatay, on Wednesday. There have been requests for the government to send additional aid to the disaster area.
According to the Disaster Management Authority (AFAD), around 79,000 assistance workers are now present in Turkey’s earthquake zone, according to Reuters. But given the extent of the destruction, many people are still in need of assistance.
Arif Kaan, age 3, was rescued from under the debris of a fallen apartment building in Kahramanmaras, a city close to the epicenter, about two days after the magnitude 7.8 earthquake slammed southeastern Turkey and northern Syria.
Emergency personnel covered the boy’s torso with a blanket while they gently hacked the rubble away from him, cautious of the potential of causing another collapse, with the boy’s lower body stuck under slabs of concrete and twisted rebar.
Ertugrul Kisi, the boy’s father, who had previously himself been rescued, cried as his kid was freed and placed into an ambulance.
As the dramatic rescue was carried around the nation, a Turkish television reporter exclaimed, “For now, the name of hope in Kahramanmaras is Arif Kaan.”
A few hours later, rescuers in the city of Adiyaman extricated 10-year-old Betul Edis from the ruins of her house. Her grandpa kissed her and talked sweetly to her as she was placed into an ambulance, drawing cheers from the crowd.
A video of another rescue was shared by the White Helmets:
But more than two days after Monday’s pre-dawn earthquake, which struck a vast region and pulled down thousands of structures while complicating rescue attempts with icy temperatures and continued tremors, such accounts were hard to come by.
More than two dozen countries sent search teams to assist the Turkish emergency services, and donations flooded in.
But when destruction spread throughout several cities and villages, some of which were isolated due to Syria’s continuing war, sounds from inside the piles of debris stopped wailing, and hopelessness increased among those who were still waiting for assistance.
The earthquake in Syria caused thousands of structures to collapse and added to the suffering in an area already troubled by the 12-year civil conflict and refugee crisis.
Residents of a community in northwest Syria discovered a wailing infant on Monday with her dead mother’s umbilical chord still attached. According to family members who spoke to The Associated Press, the newborn was the only member of her family to escape a building collapse in the little village of Jinderis.
Millions of war refugees now reside in Turkey. In Syria, the afflicted region is split between territory under government control and the last stronghold of the resistance, where millions depend on assistance.
According to Adelheid Marschang, a senior emergency official with the World Health Organization, as many as 23 million people might be impacted in the earthquake-affected area. She described it as a “crisis on top of several crises.”
In Turkey, many survivors were forced to spend the night in their vehicles, outdoors, or in public shelters.
“We don’t have anything, even a tent or a stove for heat. Our kids are in terrible condition. While our children are outside in the chilly weather, we are all getting soaked “27-year-old Aysan Kurt told the AP. We won’t die from the cold; we didn’t die from hunger or the earthquake.
Erdogan proclaimed a state of emergency in 10 regions after claiming that 13 million of the 85 million citizens of the nation were impacted. Authorities in Turkey said that more than 8,000 people had been rescued from the rubble and that 380,000 others had sought safety in hotels or government shelters.
Aid attempts in Syria have been hindered by the continuing conflict and the segregation of the rebel-held border area, which is encircled by government troops supported by Russia. As a result of Western sanctions related to the conflict, Syria itself has become a global pariah.
In order to transfer supplies to the northwest region controlled by rebels, the UN said that it was “exploring all options.”
Major fault lines run across the area, which often experiences earthquakes. Similarly strong earthquakes that struck northwest Turkey in 1999 claimed over 18,000 lives.
»Turkey and Syria earthquake deaths are about 9,000«