Rescuers raced against time early Wednesday to pull survivors from the rubble before they succumbed to the cold weather two days after an earthquake struck southern Turkey and war-torn northern Syria. The death toll passed 7,700 and was expected to rise further.
The past two days have brought dramatic rescues, including young children emerging from piles of rubble more than 30 hours after Monday’s pre-dawn quake. But there was also widespread despair and growing anger at the slow pace of rescue efforts in some areas.
“It’s like we woke up in hell,” said Osman Can Taninmis, whose relatives were still under the rubble in Hatay, Turkey’s hardest-hit province. “We cannot respond to absolutely anything. Help does not come, cannot come. We can’t reach anyone at all. Everything is destroyed.”
In Syria, residents found a crying newborn still connected by the umbilical cord to her dead mother. The baby was the only member of her family to survive a building collapse in the small town of Jinderis, relatives told The Associated Press.
Search teams arrived from almost 30 countries and promises of help. But with the damage spreading to several cities and towns, some cut off by Syria’s ongoing conflict, the voices calling for help from the rubble mounds fell silent.
Monday’s 7.8 magnitude quake and powerful aftershocks left a swath of destruction stretching hundreds of kilometers (miles) across southeastern Turkey and neighboring Syria. The quake toppled thousands of buildings and increased misery in a region ravaged by civil war and the 12-year refugee crisis in Syria.
Turkey is home to millions of war refugees. The affected area in Syria is divided between government-controlled territory and the last opposition-controlled enclave of the country, where millions depend on humanitarian aid to survive.
Unstable piles of metal and concrete made search efforts dangerous, while freezing temperatures made them increasingly urgent, as concerns grew over how long survivors trapped in the cold could survive. Snow swirled around rescuers in parts of Turkey.
The scale of the suffering, and the rescue effort that accompanied it, were staggering.
Adelheid Marschang, the World Health Organization’s chief emergency officer, said up to 23 million people could be affected across the quake-hit area, calling it a “crisis on top of multiple crises.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said 13 million of the country’s 85 million people were affected and declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. More than 8,000 people have been rescued from the rubble in Turkey and some 380,000 have taken refuge in government shelters or hotels, authorities said.
But the authorities faced criticism from residents of Hatay, a hard-hit spot between Syria and the Mediterranean Sea, who say rescue efforts have been delayed. Erdogan’s handling of the crisis could weigh heavily on elections scheduled for May, and his office has already dismissed the criticism as disinformation.
Nurgul Atay told The Associated Press that he could hear his mother’s voice under the rubble of a collapsed building in the Turkish city of Antakya, the capital of Hatay province. But rescuers did not have the heavy equipment necessary to rescue her.
“If we could just lift the concrete slab, we could reach it,” he said. “My mother is 70 years old, she won’t be able to take this for long.”
Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said 1,647 people died in Hatay alone, the highest number of any Turkish province. At least 1,846 people had been rescued there as of Tuesday night, he said. Hatay airport was closed after the earthquake destroyed the runway, complicating rescue efforts.
Meanwhile, in Syria, aid efforts have been hampered by the ongoing war and the isolation of the rebel-held region along the border, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. Syria itself is an international pariah under war-linked Western sanctions.
Volunteer first responders known as the White Helmets have years of experience rescuing people from buildings destroyed by Syrian and Russian airstrikes in the rebel-held enclave, but say the quake has overwhelmed their capabilities.
Mounir al-Mostafa, the deputy chief of the White Helmets, said they were able to respond efficiently in up to 30 locations at a time, but are now facing calls for help from more than 700.
“Teams are present in those places, but the available machinery and equipment is not enough,” he said, adding that the first 72 hours were crucial for any rescue effort.
The United Nations said it was “exploring all avenues” to get supplies into the rebel-held northwest.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the road leading to the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, the only terminal through which UN aid can enter the rebel-held area, was damaged by the earthquake, which interrupted deliveries.
Dujarric said the UN was preparing a convoy to cross the conflict lines into Syria.
The UN is already delivering aid across conflict lines to the rebel-held enclave. But it is unable to move the amounts needed due to difficulties organizing convoys with the opposing parties, making aid deliveries from Turkey critical.
Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government has pushed for years for all humanitarian aid to be sent from Syria, including to the opposition-controlled enclave. The UN has increased cross-conflict line deliveries, but not enough for the millions of people in need.
Turkey has a large number of troops in the border region and has tasked the army with helping its rescue efforts, including setting up tents for survivors and a field hospital in Hatay province.
A navy ship docked at the provincial port of Iskenderun on Tuesday, where a hospital collapsed, to transport people who need medical attention to a nearby town.
A huge fire at the port, caused by containers that overturned during the quake, sent thick plumes of black smoke into the sky. The Defense Ministry said the fire was extinguished with the help of military aircraft, but live footage broadcast by CNN Turk showed it was still burning.
Vice President Fuat Oktoy said that at least 5,894 people have died from the earthquake in Turkey, with another 34,810 injured.
The death toll in Syria’s government-controlled areas has risen to 812, with some 1,400 injured, according to the Health Ministry. At least 1,020 people have been killed in the rebel-held northwest, according to the White Helmets, with more than 2,300 injured.
The region sits on major fault lines and is frequently rocked by earthquakes. Some 18,000 people died in equally powerful earthquakes that struck northwestern Turkey in 1999.
