Rescuers in Turkey find living under rubble 10 days after earthquake
2023.02.16 08:53
Rescuers in Turkey find living under rubble 10 days after earthquake
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – More than ten days after the earthquake that killed more than 42,000 people in Turkey and Syria, a teenage girl was pulled alive from the rubble on Thursday, as families of those still missing awaited news of their loved ones’ fate.
The 17-year-old was rescued in Turkey’s southeast, in the province of Kahramanmaras, according to TRT Haber, 248 hours after the 7.8-magnitude quake on Feb. 6 that occurred in the dead of night.
She was captured being transported to an ambulance on a stretcher covered in a thermal blanket of gold color.
According to authorities, the deadliest earthquake in modern Turkey’s history has now killed 36,187 people. The death toll in Syria, where the earthquake has exacerbated a humanitarian crisis brought on by 12 years of war, is 5,800, and this number hasn’t changed much in days.
Even though a number of people were found alive on Wednesday in Turkey, reports of such rescues have become increasingly common. The number of people still missing in Turkey and Syria has not been disclosed by authorities.
After becoming homeless in winter temperatures that were close to freezing, millions of people are in need of humanitarian assistance.
A photograph of two missing boys had been attached to a tree in the vicinity of the flat block where they lived in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras.
“Their parents are dead,” said earthquake survivor Bayram Nacar, who waited with other mask-wearing local men as an excavator cleared a large pile of shattered concrete and twisted metal rods behind the tree.
He stated that the wreckage still contained the bodies of the boys’ parents. The name of the father was Atilla Sariyildiz. His body has not yet been located. After the excavators clear the debris, we hope to locate the parents.
According to the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) of Turkey, the disaster zone had experienced more than 4,300 aftershocks since the initial one.
The death toll in territory controlled by the Syrian government has been set at 1,414 and stated to be the final total.
The rebel-held northwest of Syria has seen the most deaths, but since Feb. 9, no one has been found alive there, and rescue efforts have shifted to helping survivors.
Health authorities now face a daunting task in trying to ensure that people remain disease-free with much of the region’s sanitation infrastructure damaged or rendered inoperable.
The conflict has hampered the aid effort in the northwest, and as aid moves to other parts of the vast disaster zone, many people there feel abandoned.
On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) stated that the welfare of people in the northwest, where approximately 4 million people were already reliant on humanitarian assistance prior to the earthquake, was of particular concern.
In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, a route utilized by the United Nations was temporarily blocked, causing aid deliveries from Turkey to be completely disrupted.
More than a week after the earthquake, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad approved the opening of two additional aid crossings this week. He has been asked to authorize the opening of additional access points by the WHO.
A spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs told Reuters that since the earthquake, 119 UN trucks had passed through the Bab al-Hawa and Bab al-Salam crossings.
Given that the region is still experiencing a cholera outbreak, the assistance included food, essential medicines, tents and other shelter supplies, and cholera testing kits.
Britain announced on Wednesday that it would be issuing two brand-new licenses to make it simpler for earthquake relief organizations to operate in Syria without violating sanctions against the Assad government and its backers.
