Six pulled from rubble as survivors leave Turkey quake zone

Six survivors were rescued from the rubble in Turkey on Tuesday, eight days after a devastating earthquake, as the focus shifts to helping those who survived find shelter, food or a haven elsewhere.

The disaster, with a combined death toll in Turkey and neighbouring Syria now exceeding 37,000, has ravaged cities in both countries, leaving survivors homeless in the bitter cold, at times sleeping on piles of rubble.

The six rescued on Tuesday included two brothers, aged 17 and 21, pulled from an apartment block in Kahramanmaras province, and a woman rescued from the rubble of a building in the southern Turkish city of Hatay, Turkish media said.

But U.N. authorities have said the rescue phase was coming to a close, with the focus turning to shelter, food and schooling, as those who survived said they were struggling.

“People are suffering a lot. We applied to receive tent, aid or something but until now we didn’t receive anything,” said Hassan Saimoua, a refugee staying with his family in a playground in Turkey’s southeastern city of Gaziantep.

Saimoua and other Syrian refugees who had found refuge in Gaziantep from the war at home but were made homeless by the quake used plastic sheets, blankets and cardboard to erect makeshift tents on a patch of grass in the playground.

“The needs are huge, increasing by the hour,” said Hans Henri P. Kluge, the World Health Organizations’s director for Europe. “Some 26 million people across both countries need humanitarian assistance.”

“There are also growing concerns over emerging health issues linked to the cold weather, hygiene and sanitation, and the spread of infectious diseases – with vulnerable people especially at risk.”

Meanwile, survivors joined a mass exodus from earthquake-hit zones, leaving their homes unsure if they can ever come back.

‘VERY HARD’

“It’s very hard … We will start from zero, without belongings, without a job,” said 22-year-old Hamza Bekry, a Syrian originally from Idlib who has lived in Hatay, in southern Turkey, for 12 years.

“Our house collapsed completely. Several of our relatives died, there are still ones under the rubble,” he added, as he prepared to follow his family to Isparta in southern Turkey.

He will become one of more than 158,000 people who have evacuated the vast swathe of southern Turkey hit by the quake, one of the deadliest tremors in the region’s modern history.

Drone footage in Kahramanmaras showed empty buildings with their walls ripped open by the quake, which caused the collapse of dozens of structures and forced hundreds of families to live in tents erected in a stadium in freezing temperatures.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, who faces an election scheduled for June that is expected to be the toughest of his two decades in power, acknowledged problems in the initial response but said the situation was now under control.

Turkey’s Urbanisation Minister Murat Kurum said some 42,000 buildings had either collapsed, were in urgent need of demolition, or were severely damaged across 10 cities.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed to allow U.N. aid to enter from Turkey via two more border crossings late on Monday, the world body said, in a move that could help get aid to those in opposition-held northwest Syria.

‘DAD, AFTERSHOCK!’

Meanwhile, the search for survivors is about to end in the north west of Syria, the head of the White Helmets main rescue group, Raed al Saleh, said, adding: “The indications we have are that there are not any (survivors) but we are trying to do our final checks and on all sites.”

Russia also said it was wrapping up its search and rescue work in Turkey and Syria and preparing to withdraw from the disaster zone.

The Turkish toll was 31,974 killed, the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said on Tuesday. More than 5,814 have died in Syria according to a Reuters tally of reports from Syrian state media and a U.N. agency.

At a Turkish field hospital in the southern city of Iskenderun, Indian Army Major Beena Tiwari said patients initially reported physical injuries but that was changing.

“Now more of the patients are coming with post-traumatic stress disorder, following all the shock that they’ve gone through during the earthquake and whatever they have seen,” she said.

In Aleppo as well, a former frontline in Syria’s war, families who had to leave their homes are now dealing with the psychological aftermath of the quake.

“Whenever he forgets, he hears a loud sound and then remembers again,” Hassan Moaz said of his nine-year-old. “When he’s sleeping at night and hears a sound, he wakes up and tells me: Dad, aftershock!.”