‘We cannot bury our dead. There are corpses everywhere’, lament Turks

The situation in the 10 Turkish provinces affected by Monday’s devastating earthquakes is worsening as time goes on and, as the death toll continues to rise, survivors are struggling to meet their most basic needs in freezing weather of up to -6 degrees. .

So far, the series of earthquakes on Monday have left 8,574 dead only in Turkey, where there are also more than 37,000 wounded. Rescue teams have managed to recover some 8,000 people alive from almost 6,000 destroyed buildings.

Turkish journalists reporting from the affected cities of Kahramanmaras, Hatay, Iskenderun and Malatya early on Wednesday, more than 48 hours after the earthquakeThey agree that there are hundreds of collapsed buildings where no rescue team has arrived and people plead for help.

HalkTV reported live from Malatya that women survivorschildren and the elderly were in terrible conditions, without access to basic necessities and with temperatures several degrees below zero.

Despair grows because in some collapsed buildings the voices of survivors can be heard, but they cannot be helped due to the lack of specialized equipment.

“No one in the city can enter any building because of the danger of collapse. Going to the toilet, something so far simple, is a very big problem. There is no water at home or at the gas stations ”, explains that television about the situation.

“People try to warm up in their cars, but they can’t refill the tank because there is no fuel at the service stations,” he adds.

Yildirim Kurt, a farmer from Nurhak district in Kahramanmaras, one of the hardest hit areas, told EFE by phone that until now none had arrived aid to his small town.

Seyhan Asker, a reporter for Halk TV, reported this morning from Islahiye, a Hatay town of 60,000 where his parents lived: “All the houses in the city have to be rebuilt. No one can even live in the houses that were not destroyed. Half of the town’s houses are leveled.”

Mustafa Kara, who lost his wife in Kahramanmaras in the collapse of a nine-story building, expressed his outrage on Halk TV: “Is this state such a small thing? There is nothing. We cannot bury our dead. There are corpses everywhere.”

“They have collapsed more than 900 buildings. If each one has between eight and ten apartments, how many people are under the rubble? There is no electricity, no gasoline, people loot supermarkets. There is no food, no milk for the children”, that neighbor complained.

In Iskenderun a fire in the port and the rise in sea level complicates the evacuation of wounded by ship to other cities.

Apparently, a container with chemicals burned right after the earthquake and the flames spread to the other containers in the port in a short time. Despite the intervention of planes and ships of the Armythe fire could not be put out and the smoke creates breathing problems in a wide area.

While criticism of the government intensifies for not taking measures on time, mismanaging the crisis and not sending the Army at the first moments, the main channels focus on the people rescued alive in the buildings where the rescue work continues.

Rescue teams rescued a 24-year-old teacher, Mesude Akar, from the rubble of a collapsed building 49 hours after the Hatay earthquake. An hour before her, two other women were also rescued alive from the rubble in the same area, the news agency reported. anadolu.

The situation of the dams in the region is another cause for concern, since it was reported that cracks in some of them due to tremors.

“We have 110 dams, so far we have completed the tests in 90 of them. because there is risk in seismic periods“said the Minister of Agriculture, Vahit Kirisçi.

The panorama drawn by the media on the third day from the cities where the cameras are seen is horrifying, with hundreds and hundreds of buildings destroyed and towns without any media attention.