Civilians look for survivors under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Kahramanmaras, close to the quake's epicentre, the day after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Türkiye on February 7, 2023. Photo: AFP / Adem Altan
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces devastated by two earthquakes that killed more than 7800 people and left a trail of destruction across a wide area of southern Türkiye and neighbouring Syria.
As the scale of the disaster became ever more apparent, the death toll looked likely to rise considerably. One United Nations official said it was feared thousands of children may have been killed.
And residents in several damaged Turkish cities voiced anger and despair at what they said was a slow and inadequate response from the authorities to the deadliest earthquake to hit Türkiye since 1999.
"There is not even a single person here. We are under the snow, without a home, without anything," said Murat Alinak, whose home in Malatya had collapsed and whose relatives are missing. "What shall I do, where can I go?"
Monday's magnitude 7.8 quake, followed hours later by a second one almost as powerful, toppled thousands of buildings including hospitals, schools and apartment blocks, injured tens of thousands, and left countless people homeless in Turkey and northern Syria.
Rescue workers struggled to reach some of the worst-hit areas, held back by destroyed roads, poor weather and a lack of resources and heavy equipment. Some areas were without fuel and electricity.
With little immediate help at hand, residents picked through rubble sometimes without even basic tools in a desperate hunt for survivors.
Aid officials voiced particular concern about the situation in Syria, already afflicted by a humanitarian crisis after nearly 12 years of civil war.
Erdogan declared 10 Turkish provinces a disaster zone and imposed a state of emergency for three months that will permit the government to bypass parliament in enacting new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms. The government last year changed the country's name to Türkiye.
The government will open up hotels in the tourism hub of Antalya to temporarily house people impacted by the quakes, said Erdogan, who faces a national election in three months' time.
The death toll in Turkey rose to 5894, Vice President Fuat Oktay said. More than 34,000 were injured. In Syria, the toll was at least 1932, according to the government and a rescue service in the insurgent-held northwest.
'Every minute, every hour'
Onlookers and relatives gather around a cordonned-off area in Gaziantep, close to the quake's epicentre, a day after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Türkiye, on February 7, 2023. Photo: AFP / Zein Al Rifai
Turkish authorities say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450km from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east, and 300km from Malatya in the north to Hatay in the south.
Syrian authorities have reported deaths as far south as Hama, some 250km from the epicentre.
"It's now a race against time," World Health Organisation Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva. "Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminishes."
Across the region, rescuers toiled night and day as people waited in anguish by mounds of rubble clinging to the hope that friends, relatives and neighbours might be found alive
In Antakya, capital of Hatay province bordering Syria, rescue teams were thin on the ground and residents picked through debris themselves. People pleaded for helmets, hammers, iron rods and rope.
One woman, aged 54 and named Gulumser, was pulled alive from an eight-storey building 32 hours after the quake.
Another woman then shouted at the rescue workers: "My father was just behind that room she was in. Please save him."
The workers explained they could not reach the room from the front and needed an excavator to remove the wall first.
More than 12,000 Turkish search and rescue personnel are working in the affected areas, along with 9000 troops. Some 70 countries and sending personnel, equipment and aid, including New Zealand which will donate $1 million to Türkiye and $500,000 to Syria.
New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said it was too early to say if the country would send search and rescue staff, but he was not ruling it out.
"The international community supported New Zealand extensively following the Christchurch earthquake. So of course, we acknowledge how these things happen, we acknowledge the devastating effects that they can have. We've had firsthand experience in New Zealand of that. Naturally our thoughts are going to be with the people in Turkey and Syria in what is undoubtedly an absolutely tragic situation."
But the sheer scale of the disaster is daunting.
"The area is enormous. I haven't seen anything like this before," said Johannes Gust, from Germany's fire and rescue service, as he loaded equipment onto a truck at Türkiye's Adana airport.
Türkiye's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said 5775 buildings had been destroyed in the quake and that 20,426 people had been injured.
Two US Agency for International Development teams with 80 people each and 12 dogs are set to arrive Wednesday morning in Turkey (local time) and head to the southeastern province of Adiyaman to focus on urban search and rescue.
In Geneva, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said: "The earthquakes ... may have killed thousands of children."
'Terrifying scene'
An aerial picture shows rescuers searching the rubble of buildings for casualties and survivors in the village of Salqin in Syria's Idlib province following an earthquake, on February 7, 2023. Photo: AFP / Omar Haj Kadour
Syrian refugees in northwest Syria and in Türkiye were among the most vulnerable people affected, Elder said.
In the Syrian city of Hama, Abdallah al Dahan said funerals for several families were taking place on Tuesday.
"It's a terrifying scene in every sense," said Dahan, contacted by phone. "In my whole life I haven't seen anything like this, despite everything that has happened to us."
Mosques opened their doors to families whose homes were damaged.
State news agency SANA said at least 812 people were killed and 1449 people injured in the government-held provinces of Aleppo, Latakia, Hama, Idlib and Tartous.
At least 1020 people were killed in Syria's opposition-held northwest and 2300 injured with the toll expected to "rise dramatically", the White Helmets rescue team said.
"There are lot of efforts by our teams, but they are unable to respond to the catastrophe and the large number of collapsed buildings," group head Raed al-Saleh said.
Time was running out to save hundreds of families trapped under the rubble of buildings and urgent help was needed from international groups, he said.
A UN humanitarian official in Syria said fuel shortages and the harsh weather were creating obstacles.
"The infrastructure is damaged, the roads that we used to use for humanitarian work are damaged," UN resident coordinator El-Mostafa Benlamlih told Reuters from Damascus.
A fire that engulfed hundreds of shipping containers at Türkiye's Iskenderun port was put out, the defence ministry said, but it was not clear when operations there would resume.
In Malatya, Türkiye, locals with no specialist equipment or even gloves tried to pick through the wreckage of homes crumpled by the force of the earthquake.
"My in-laws' grandchildren are there. We have been here for two days. We are devastated," Sabiha Alinak said.
"Where is the state? We are begging them. Let us do it, we can rescue them. We can do it with our means."
NZ looking to learn from experience
New Zealand Earthquake Commission chief resilience and research officer Dr Jo Horrocks told Morning Report the Turkey earthquake was geologically similar to the Kaikōura earthquake in 2016, but with very different results.
"A large part of that is due to the sheer population density that we see in Turkey and Syria versus Marlborough, but the really big thing is of course the building standards and we are lucky that we've had very good building standards in place and complied with since the '70s," Horrocks said.
"Turkey has also got reasonable building standards, but I think there's possibly issues with how that's being implemented in practice, sort of enforcement and monitoring."
There was lots to learn from their experience, she said.
"I know that some of the engineering community in New Zealand is already starting to look at what we might learn from this, what we might learn from the ground motion versus the building performance.
"I think we will have some discussions about whether it's appropriate to send sort of a reconnaissance team at some point, and that's mainly to learn for New Zealand. But also what we might be able to offer in return."
The existing building stock was her biggest worry for earthquake preparedness, she said.
"Wellington obviously comes to mind, but there's processes in place, there's legislation in place to try and fix our worst sort of vulnerabilities if you like. A lot has been put in place since the Canterbury earthquake sequence, including to address things like unreinforced masonry.
"So we've come a really, really long way in the last 12 years, but always looking for that extra thing we can do that might mean you know less impact in the future."
- Reuters / RNZ
