A humanitarian catastrophe began in Turkey after the earthquake: people still remain under the rubble

The situation in Turkey after the earthquake remains difficult. The rubble in the affected cities and the search for the missing continues.

Earlier, MK wrote about a Muscovite family with two minor children who ended up under the ruins of a five-story building in Khatai.

On Wednesday, rescuers from Turkey and Russia started working near their house. According to a family friend, about twenty specialists cleared the rubble. Even on Wednesday, voices were heard in the place where the missing family is supposed to be.

On Thursday, we were informed that during the night the rescuers did not manage to reach people. A friend of those under the ruins confirmed, “There is no news from there. The phones don’t work, the batteries are dead, there is no electricity.” Meanwhile, on local television, rescuers said that people can survive without food and water for 72 hours, then there is less chance.

“Social media is flooded with photos of the missing”

Russian Elena lives in Alanya. A woman collects aid for the victims. Her husband delivers cargo to the devastated areas.

– There are a lot of missing people. Social media is filled with pictures of people they can’t find. Among them is a family from Ukraine, several Russians, – says Elena. – Now there is a site where they publish photos of children who are left without parents. They ask their loved ones to respond. The Kazakhs have been looking for rescuers and equipment for a long time in order to dig out their friends, who are still under the rubble. Excavations are sluggish, there is clearly a lack of equipment, cranes, and people who would speed up the process. There was a shortage of everything. In social networks, volunteers were even asked to bring shovels for excavations. There is a problem with translators. Rescuers from different countries work in the country, but they do not understand Turkish. Recently there was information about how three living and two dead people were pulled out from under the rubble. People begged the rescuers not to leave, to look for the rest. But they did not understand them.

It’s not easy for those who survived either. The situation in the destroyed cities is catastrophic. People live in tents where it is very cold. They have problems with water, there is nowhere to go to the toilet.

It’s even worse in the villages. The husband stopped by in one village, where people put up tents on the roadsides. They ran out not only drinking water, but also technical. They were heated by wood burning stoves. A woman with a three-year-old child was sitting on the ground, warming herself near the stove. People were wearing slippers, some had broken arms and legs. When help was distributed to them, they greedily pounced on food, asked for bread and water, and cried. From the outside, it seems that a lot of help is being collected, but you simply do not see the scale of the disaster.

A Russian woman living in Antakya posted a post on her social media page: “We slept in a greenhouse for three days. There are children, pregnant women and the elderly. There was no electricity. At night the temperature reached minus 5 degrees. Warmed up near the fires. People were freezing. Humanitarian aid was not enough. Thousands of people remained under the rubble.”

A resident of Malatya described the terrible situation: “In the early days, almost no one is saved here. Only 35 people worked in the local Ministry of Emergency Situations. Only on Wednesday, humanitarian aid was brought to the survivors. Almost the entire city was destroyed along with roads and bridges. We even fell new high-rise buildings. The tremors are still going on. Now the food is better, but there are not enough rescuers, as well as professional equipment.”

“Experts say that it can take a day or even more to rescue one person from the rubble, depending on the amount of destruction,” Elena continues. – On TV they showed a grandfather who had been waiting for several days for his grandchildren to be pulled out from under the rubble of the house. He stood with cookies to feed them. But he did not wait for anyone … The difficult situation remains in hospitals. Doctors from the city of Mersin wrote that about two hundred wounded were delivered to them. They asked to bring slippers and warm clothes for them. Patients were admitted to hospitals barefoot, without outerwear. In addition to food and clothing, people asked to send shrouds to bury their loved ones. They were offered to bury the dead in bags.

Local media reports about the salvation of every person. They told how they pulled out a 7-year-old boy who spent 70 hours under the rubble. After 53 hours, a one-year-old child was rescued, who was lying in a crib. A 4-month-old girl spent 50 hours under the ruins.

“It’s still scary in Gaziantep,” the interlocutor adds. We have friends living there. They take groceries from food outlets. Sometimes they came, and there was nothing left, only bread, which also quickly ended. When volunteers arrived, people literally snatched food bags from their hands. Pasta, porridge cooked on fires. This is hell on earth…

“Unidentified bodies are buried quickly”

Julia from Alanya posted a post on the Web: “People were brought to the hotel, they are not fed. Volunteers brought only clothes, but no food and hygiene products.”

“They brought a lot of children, about 300 people,” Yulia explains. They didn’t have panties or socks. There are not enough volunteers in Alanya. The Russians who live here help us. But those who live in the Russian Federation are silent. In any case, I have not seen ordinary citizens from Russia come here. Although a lot of volunteers come from other countries.

Turkish volunteers notice that some organizations have recently stopped raising funds for the victims. The people switched to their usual life, people are tired.

Olga Polyanichkina is the head of the leasing department at a real estate investment company. She lives in Alanya, helps the victims.

– Hotels that were closed for the winter are opening in the city – those who have lost their homes are settled there, – says Olga. — These are private small, inexpensive hotels. Many hotels provide people with three meals a day. But there are problems with hygiene products. People were given just a bar of soap per family.

We went to one such hotel yesterday. The victims were recognized by clothes from someone else’s shoulder and by their eyes. When we talk, we look into the eyes of the interlocutor, and these people lower their heads. They do not cry, but look confused and depressed. I thought that we would bring them food, clothes, they would be delighted, or at least start smiling and thanking. But none of this happened. They seem to be in a stupor. They froze like beaten dogs. I then moved away from what I saw for a long time. There is a huge difference from what you see on TV and when you communicate live. There was so much pain in people’s eyes.

Yesterday we took a few people to a clothing store. One man, about 30 years old, did not communicate with anyone. My husband barely managed to get a few words out of him. He said he lost his entire family. Only he and a 2-year-old child survived.

Some were embarrassed to ask for purchases. We literally persuaded them to choose their clothes. They approached, looked at the price, then at us: “What can I buy?”. It can be seen that they are uncomfortable and unpleasant. I had to choose for them, give them in their hands and force them to measure.

Those people who have lost everything are placed in the hotels. For several months they will live in Alanya until the state provides them with housing. President Erdogan promised to build houses for them within a year. There is currently no available housing.

According to Olga, in two days Alanya sent 20 trucks with humanitarian cargo to the affected regions. The line of those wishing to donate blood is not shrinking: “We tried to donate blood, but we were refused. It turns out that the queue is scheduled for a week ahead. Doctors don’t have the capacity to accept so many donors a day.”

– How are the dead who could not be identified buried?

– The Turkish news showed that the dead were buried quickly. Those who could not be identified are buried on the same day as the body was found. Previously, DNA is taken from the deceased, in case relatives show up. Information about the place of burial is fixed.

Olga, as an employee of a real estate company, commented on the situation with the sale and rental of houses after the tragedy.

– There are alarmists. Some are no longer going to come to Turkey, they are afraid to stay even in hotels, says Olga. – It seems to me that foreigners who used to actively buy or rent apartments for the winter are pretty scared. I hope that later they will understand that not all areas in Turkey are earthquake-prone. Nevertheless, someone has already changed his mind about buying a home. I hope time will pass, people will calm down.

In the south-east of Turkey, where the destruction is the greatest, foreigners have not taken housing before. There is no sea, they do not go there. And the coast is safe. We are slightly shaken, but these are only echoes of the main earthquake.

Those who do not give in to panic are more likely to ask questions about the construction. But with such a strong earthquake, good houses would also be destroyed.