In Turkey and Syria, more than 41,000 deaths have already been recorded after the earthquakes. Now, organizations such as the United Nations and the WHO are asking the international community for help to ensure the well-being of the survivors, especially in Syria, plunged into a civil war for more than 11 years. Meanwhile, rescue teams from both countries continue to register “impossible” rescues nine days after the two earthquakes.
The number does not stop increasing. According to the most recent data, more than 41,000 people have already died in Turkey and Syria after the earthquakes last week.
Faced with this tragedy, now the public authorities and organizations are focused on a single objective: trying to help those who survived.
The natural disaster has left many health centers and hospitals damaged and, now, one of the main challenges facing the health authorities is trying to ensure that the survivors do not contract any disease. Difficult task under current conditions.
“We haven’t been able to bathe since the earthquake,” Mohammad Emin, a 21-year-old graphic design student, told Reuters while carrying flu medicine.
Emin, like many others, is volunteering to distribute and provide medicine to disaster survivors, who are staying in a Kahramanmaras stadium temporarily converted into a camp. The six toilets there are not enough for everyone to wash.
“Water scarcity in earthquake-affected areas increases the risk of disease and communicable disease outbreaks,” Batyr Berdyklychev, World Health Organization representative in Turkey, warned of situations like this.
And in Syria the situation is no better. The civil war in which the country has been plunged for more than 11 years has made humanitarian aid work difficult, especially in the northwest, hard hit by the earthquake.
Faced with this situation, the WHO asked the Syrian government to open more corridors to send humanitarian aid.
“Never in my life have I seen a level of destruction like I did from Aleppo to Damascus. Skeleton houses. Hardly any people in sight. More than a decade of war has come at an unimaginable price. Syrians need our support now and in the coming years to rebuild their lives,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, in a trill that he accompanied with a video of the journey.
I’ve never in my life seen the level of destruction as I did on the road from Aleppo to Damascus. Skeletons of houses. Almost no people in sight. Over a decade of war has taken an unimaginable toll. Syrians need our support now and in years to come to rebuild their lives. pic.twitter.com/Ym2zmDixdw
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) February 14, 2023
There, the tragedy of those displaced by the war is added to that of those displaced by the earthquake. Those who have been left homeless see little hope for the future.
“Anyone who works as a day laborer and rents a house has it bad. You need $10 a day for expenses and you barely get that working… how are you supposed to rebuild?” said Mohammad, a citizen originally from Aleppo.
Faced with this situation, the United Nations called for donations to the victims of the earthquake. For the people affected in Syria, the UN has requested 397 million dollars to the international community for the five million people who need assistance in the Arab country.
“Aid must come from all sides, to all sides, through all routes,” António Guterres, the United Nations secretary-general, said from New York.
Impossible Survivor Stories
In Turkey and Syria, ransoms are increasingly scarce. And it is that the number of hours since the earthquakes makes it practically impossible to get people out of the rubble alive. But there are cases that defy logic.
When Huseyin Berber was rescued from the rubble, his voice was hoarse. He had spent more than a week asking for help. Berber, an 82-year-old diabetic, spent 187 hours under the walls of his house. He only had a bottle of water, and when he ran out, he drank his urine.
“The ceiling collapsed, but it didn’t hit me. I immediately crouched down and sat down. The wall fell on the fridge and cupboard. I got stuck there. There was a rug. I grabbed it and put it on top of me… I saw there was an armchair, I got on it, I grabbed the rug and sat there (…) I screamed, screamed and screamed. Nobody heard me. I screamed so much that my throat hurt,” Berber said about his survival, which also allowed the medicine for diabetes that he found next to the water bottle.
It is one of those cases that seem impossible but are real. In this regard, experts point out that people can endure in closed spaces for several days, even without water. But variables like injuries sustained in a building collapse or how hot or cold it is outside make anything that happens after five days a “miracle.”
The most recent “miraculous” rescue was that of two women in Kahramanmaras. At 74 and 77 years old, both survived more than 200 hours in the rubble.
Amid the rescue efforts, the government has adopted a more reassuring tone and has asked people to return to their homes, as long as they have been proven safe. They want to pave the way back to normality.
At the same time, the Executive has announced that it will immediately demolish more than 50,000 buildings affected by the earthquakes.
“We will quickly demolish what needs to be demolished and build safe houses,” Murat Kurum, Turkey’s Minister of Environment and Urban Planning, said on social media.
And it is that, in addition to ensuring the well-being of the survivors, the Turkish authorities must now ensure that the country does not experience a similar situation in the coming years when an earthquake occurs again.
With Reuters and local media
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