ISTANBUL — Nearly 10,000 rescue workers have spread out across 10 Turkish provinces hit by a strong earthquake and aftershocks early Monday, officials said, but the need is still so great that when the curtain fell. Night falls, some places are still waiting for help in the winter cold.
Turkish Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said more than 3,450 buildings had collapsed in 10 cities in southern and southeastern Turkey.
Rescue efforts were hampered by snow and cold. Around 9 p.m. local time in Kahramanmaras, the epicenter of the quake, temperatures were around 40 degrees Fahrenheit.
“This is a race against time and hypothermia,” said Mikdat Kadioglu, a professor of meteorology and disaster management at Istanbul Technical University. “Everybody was wearing nightgowns and had been under the rubble for 17 hours,” he said.
The Turkish government has sent four helicopters loaded with rescue teams to Hatay, the country’s southernmost province. Located southwest of the earthquake’s epicenter, it is home to 1.6 million people, bordering Syria to the east and south, and the Mediterranean to the west. Television reports showed some of them digging through the rubble to find survivors.
In a city in Hatay, Antakya, a homeless resident, Fehim Zeydan, said: “People are trying to save family members with their bare hands. Not even a shovel.”
“The city office where I worked, the governor’s mansion, the building of the medical directorate, were destroyed,” Zeydan added.
Authorities said some rescue teams were still on their way to the disaster areas but were hampered by snow and rain. “All the country’s resources have been deployed to the disaster zone,” Yunus Sezer, head of AFAD, Turkey’s emergency agency, said in a televised press conference.
According to official figures, in Hayat province alone, at least 1,200 buildings have been destroyed, 520 people have been killed, 700 injured and an unspecified number still trapped under the rubble.
Mr Zeydan said he ran to a park during the pre-dawn tremor and waited there until sunrise, then walked around the city to survey the damage he said was extensive.
In a video he recorded and provided to The New York Times, a blanket-covered injured man lies on the ground, screaming as three other men try to lift him into a wheelchair.
“Why isn’t there a helicopter or a drone here?” Mr. Zeydan said. “We’re all lonely.”
According to the mayor of Hatay, Lutfu Savas, two rescue teams are working in Antakya.
“We try our best, but some of our colleagues are having a hard time,” he say. “We need outside help. We need rescue assistance.”
“The city cannot solve this alone,” he added.
Eren Can, a lawyer living in Istanbul, says he knows nothing about his elderly parents, whose building in Antakya collapsed and he is sure they were buried in the rubble. But Mr Can, who got into his car early Monday morning with his brother to try to drive to Antakya, said rescuers had not yet reached their parents’ vicinity.
“I’m on my way, hoping that they can be rescued,” he said. “I’m trying to get the rescue work started at the same time.”
