2 years ago
1102
Combined death toll passes 16,000
The Associated Press has reported that the provisional death toll in Syria – provided by Syrian government officials and a rescue group in the rebel-held north-west of the country – has reached 3,162.
Turkey’s disaster agency said earlier on Thursday that the number of people confirmed dead had climbed to 12,873 overnight. That means the combined tally of fatalities from the quakes in both countries has now reached 16,035.
More than 60,000 people are reported injured in Turkey and more than 5,000 injured in Syria.
The first convoy of humanitarian assistance for people in northwest Syria since Monday’s devastating earthquake is en route to the southern Turkish border with the hope of crossing on Thursday, two aid sources have told Reuters.
A Turkish official said the Bab al-Hawa border crossing was open for humanitarian aid and authorities will open a few more crossings after two days if security is sound. The convoy reportedly includes at least six trucks of medical and humanitarian aid supplies.
The United Nations has described access to the opposition-controlled area of Syria through Bab al-Hawa as a “lifeline” for some 4 million people who it says rely on humanitarian assistance.
Rescue workers in Turkey have pulled an injured 60-year-old woman, Meral Nakir, from the rubble of an apartment block in the city of Malatya, 77 hours after the first quake struck, the Turkish state broadcaster TRT has reported.
Hopes of finding many more survivors in winter temperatures that have plunged as low as minus 5C are fading, however, particularly in northwest Syria where rescue efforts are hampered by the devastation wrought by 11 years of civil war.
“The death toll and injured is expected to rise much higher with many families still under collapsed buildings,” Raed Saleh, head of the rescue service in the northwest, told Reuters on Thursday morning. “No assistance has come yet and we are waiting today to see if any is coming.”
Combined death toll passes 16,000
The Associated Press has reported that the provisional death toll in Syria – provided by Syrian government officials and a rescue group in the rebel-held north-west of the country – has reached 3,162.
Turkey’s disaster agency said earlier on Thursday that the number of people confirmed dead had climbed to 12,873 overnight. That means the combined tally of fatalities from the quakes in both countries has now reached 16,035.
More than 60,000 people are reported injured in Turkey and more than 5,000 injured in Syria.
British charities’ experience on the ground will allow them to overcome the difficulties of getting aid to quake victims in Syria, Saleh Saeed, the chief executive of the UK’s Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), has said.
Northern Syria is controlled by rebel groups and multiple reports suggest aid is flowing less easily into the area than into the south of Turkey, which was also badly affected by the disaster. Saeed told BBC Breakfast:
"Indeed Syria is still in a state of conflict, but our members have been working in Syria for 10 years. They have people on the ground, both local staff and volunteers. So despite the challenges of course they are experiencing now because of the damaged roads and immense traffic and so forth, aid is getting through and they are scaling up. The needs in Syria are immense."
Rescuers are continuing to comb through the rubble of collapsed buildings in Syria and Turkey, but the so-called critical 72-hour window since the earthquake has now passed and the chances of finding people alive are falling fast, experts say.
“The first 72 hours are considered to be critical,” said Steven Godby, a natural hazards expert at Nottingham Trent University, told Sky News. “The survival ratio on average within 24 hours is 74%, after 72 hours it is 22%, and by the fifth day it is 6%.”
In previous quakes people have been recovered alive after 15 days under rubble, but subzero winter temperatures since Monday mean those who survived the initial tremor but are still trapped risk dying from hypothermia, doctors have said.
Britain’s Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) is launching an appeal to help the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the quakes, with the government pledging to match the first £2m donated by the public.
The collective of 15 UK charities, including Oxfam, ActionAid, Save the Children UK and the British Red Cross, said the funds raised would go towards medical supplies, shelter, food and clean water, as well as blankets, warm clothes and heaters.
The appeal will be broadcast on British TV channels on Thursday evening.
First aid convoy due in Syria today
The first convoy of humanitarian assistance for north-west Syria, where the impact of 11 years of civil war on healthcare, emergency services and infrastructure is hugely complicating relief efforts, is en route to the southern Turkish border with the hope of crossing into Syria later on Thursday, two aid sources have told Reuters.
Access to Twitter in Turkey has been restored, Netblocks, which monitors cybersecurity and internet governance, said on Thursday after talks between the social media platform and Turkish authorities.
Access had been restricted on several mobile networks on Wednesday, removing a key communication channel for coordinating relief efforts.
Netblocks said the coordinated nature of the block suggested it was on government orders, noting that Turkey has a history of imposing social media restrictions during emergencies.
Opposition figures, academics and activists were sharply critical of the block, which came amid mounting condemnation of the Turkish government’s response to the disaster, seen by many as slow and inadequate.
Turkey’s deputy transport and infrastructure minister, Omer Fatih Sayan, said he had reminded Twitter of its responsibilities as earthquake relief work continues.
“Our demands are clear, strong cooperation on disinformation and false reports, swift action against fake accounts and ... measures against content that could damage public order and security,” Sayan said.
The company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, said earlier that it had been informed by the government that full access would be re-enabled shortly.
The body of an Australian man killed in the earthquake has been found in Turkey, Sydney’s Nine News reported.
Can Pahali, also known as John, was on holiday visiting family in the southern province of Hatay when the two quakes struck on Monday.
“I can’t, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it,” Pahali’s brother Inyas told the station. A relative who flew across from Germany found Pahali’s body among the rubble and retrieved it, Nine News reported.
Pahali is the first Australian to be confirmed dead in the disaster. Three more remain unaccounted for, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said, adding that it was supporting about 50 other Australian nationals and their families in the region.
It said the government was “deeply saddened” by the death.
Hello, this is Jon Henley taking over from Helen Sullivan – I’ll be bringing you the latest on the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria for most of the European day.
That is it from me, Helen Sullivan, for today. My colleague Jon Henley will take you through developments for the next while.
Some good news: emergency crews working through the night in the city of Antakya were able to pull a young girl from the ruins of a building and also rescued her father alive two hours later, news agency IHA reports.
And in Diyarbakir, east of Antakya, rescuers freed an injured woman from a collapsed building in the early morning hours but found the three people next to her in the rubble dead, the DHA news agency reports.
While nine out of then people rescued are pulled form the rubble within the first 72 hours, people can survive for longer.
“You see a lot of different scenarios where we’ve had some some really miraculous saves and people have survived under horrible conditions,” Dr. Christopher Colwell, an emergency medicine specialists at the University of California, San Francisco told the AP.
“They tend to be younger people and and have been fortunate enough to find either a pocket in the rubble or some way to access needed elements like air and water.″
After the 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami, a teenager and his 80-year-old grandmother were found alive after nine days trapped in their flattened home. The year before, a 16-year-old Haitian girl was rescued from earthquake rubble in Port-Au-Prince after 15 days.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and Vice President William Lai will each donate a month’s salary for Turkish earthquake relief efforts, the presidential office said on Thursday, adding to existing aid already sent by the island.
Tsai and Lai, who is widely expected to stand for the presidency in elections due next year, “hope to do their part to help Turkey rebuild its homeland as soon as possible”, the presidential office said in a statement.
Turkey, like most countries, has no diplomatic relations with Chinese-claimed Taiwan, but the two maintain de facto embassies in each other’s capitals and there are direct flights between Istanbul and Taipei.
Turkey toll rises to 12,873 bringing overall deaths to 15,865
Turkey’s death toll has risen to 12,873 overnight, from 12,391 late on Wednesday, the country’s disaster agency said. The most recent figure from Syria stands at 2,992.
This brings the overall number of dead to 15,865.
As 72-hour ‘rescue window’ passes
More than 90% of earthquake survivors are rescued within the first three days, Ilan Kelman, a professor of disasters and health at University College London has told AFP.
It is now just over72 hours since the first earthquake struck Turkey and Syria.
But that number can vary significantly depending on the weather, aftershocks and how quickly rescue teams and equipment can arrive at the scene, all factors which are currently going against efforts in Turkey and Syria.
Over 11,200 people have been killed and thousands more injured after the earthquake struck southeastern Turkey and neighbouring Syria at 04:17 am (0117 GMT) on Monday.
“Generally, earthquakes do not kill people, collapsing infrastructure kills people,” said Kelman, who has published research on quake rescue responses.
The most pressing factor is getting medical attention to people crushed under collapsed buildings before “their bodies fail” or they bleed out, he said.
Weather is also a key factor, and “it is completely against us” in Turkey and Syria, Kelman said. The quake-hit regions have suffered through freezing temperatures as well as rain and snow since Monday.
“This very sadly means that hypothermia is possible, and people are probably unfortunately perishing due to the weather,” Kelman said.
Those who do manage to survive the cold and their injuries still need food and water. Without water, many people “will start dying at the three, four, five day mark,” Kelman said.
Death toll at least 15,000 as crucial 72 hour window passes
Freezing temperatures deepened the misery Thursday for survivors of a massive earthquake in Turkey and Syria that killed at least 15,000 people, as rescuers raced to save countless people still trapped under rubble.
The death toll from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake is expected to rise sharply as rescue efforts near the 72-hour mark that disaster experts consider the most likely period to save lives.
Survivors have been left to scramble for food and shelter and in some cases watch helplessly as their relatives called for rescue, and eventually went silent under the debris, AFP reports.
“My nephew, my sister-in-law and my sister-in-law’s sister are in the ruins. They are trapped under the ruins and there is no sign of life,” Semire Coban, a kindergarten teacher, in Turkey’s Hatay told AFP.
“We can’t reach them. We are trying to talk to them, but they are not responding... We are waiting for help. It has been 48 hours now,” she said.
Summary
Hello, my name is Helen Sullivan and I’ll be bringing you the latest from the harrowing aftermath of the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria.
Rescuers are racing to save countless people from beneath the rubble, working in freezing temperatures. The death toll from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake is expected to rise sharply as rescue efforts pass the 72-hour mark that disaster experts consider the most likely period to save lives.
More than 90% of earthquake survivors are rescued within the first three days, Ilan Kelman, a professor of disasters and health at University College London, told AFP. It has now been more than 72 hours since the first earthquake struck on Monday.
We’ll have more on these stories shortly. In the meantime, here are the key recent developments:
The number of dead has risen to at least 15,383. Officials and medics said 12,391 people had died in Turkey and 2,992 in Syria from Monday’s 7.8-magnitude tremor, bringing the confirmed total to 15,383.
Visiting Kahramanmaraş, which was at the epicentre of the quake, Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said “On the first day we experienced some issues, but then on the second day and today the situation is under control”. Erdoğan promised the government aimed to build housing within one year for those left without a home in the 10 provinces affected.
In Syria, more than 298,000 people were forced to leave their homes, Syrian state media reported. The number appeared to be a reference only to the parts of Syria under government control, not those held by other factions in the north-west of the country, which is closer to the epicentre.
The World Health Organization is sending expert teams and special flights with medical supplies to Turkey and Syria, the director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has told a media briefing.
Polish rescuers working in Turkey said they had pulled nine people alive from the rubble so far, including parents with two children and a 13-year-old girl from the ruins in the city of Besni.
Rescue workers and residents erupted in cheers when a family was saved from the rubble of a demolished building in the Syrian village of Bisnia on Wednesday. A man, his son and daughter were pulled out from beneath the rubble where they had been stuck for two days.
Istanbul’s stock exchange operator suspended trading for five days until 15 February and cancelled all trades from Wednesday. Turkey’s Borsa Istanbul suspended trading on its equity and derivatives markets within minutes of opening after market-wide circuit breakers stopped the slide in the main index at 7%. The country’s benchmark index fell as much as 16% from its Friday close before the Wednesday trades were cancelled.
Syria’s government has received help from a host of Arab countries including Egypt and Iraq, as well as from its key ally Russia, which has sent rescue teams and deployed forces already in Syria to join relief work, including in Aleppo.
Syria activated the EU civil protection mechanism, two days after the earthquake, to request further assistance from the 27-country bloc and the eight other nation states that are part of the programme. The European Union mobilised search and rescue teams to help Turkey, while the bloc’s Copernicus satellite system was activated to provide emergency mapping services. At least 19 member countries have offered assistance.
Cold weather continues to affect the region with minimum and maximum temperatures for Kahramanmaraş of -6C and 1C (21-34F), for Gaziantep between -5C and 1C, and Diyarbakır expected to have continued snowfall with temperatures climbing to 2C at most.
English (United States) ·