Reuters/Ercis, Turkey
Rescue workers pulled a man from the rubble alive yesterday, more than four days after a huge quake killed at least 534 in Turkey, while homeless survivors fearing death from cold begged for aid and some accused the government of a slow response.
A man walks between tents set up as relief shelters for earthquake victims in Ercis, near the eastern Turkish city of Van
“Praise be to Allah!” cried the uncle of 18-year-old Imdat, whose name means “help” in Turkish, as hundreds of onlookers gave shouts of joy in the town of Ercis, the place worst hit by Sunday’s 7.2 magnitude quake in eastern Turkey.
A military rescue team from Azerbaijan rescued Imdat after burrowing deep into the rubble for more than two days.
Freed at last after more than 100 hours buried alive, Imdat was lifted onto a stretcher by medical workers who carried him through cheering crowds crying “Allahu Akbar!” to a waiting ambulance, which whisked him away to hospital.
The dramatic scene was a brief moment of joy after an earthquake that has devastated towns and villages and left thousands sleeping in the open, as the government struggles to deliver tents, food and other aid to distraught families.
Some survivors – who had stood in long queues only to be told there were no tents left – accused officials in the mostly Kurdish region of handing aid to supporters of the ruling AK party. Others said profiteers were hoarding tents and reselling them.
“Everyone is getting sick and wet. We have been waiting in line for four days like this and still nothing. It gets to our turn and they say they have run out,” said Fetih Zengin, 38, an estate agent whose house was badly damaged in Ercis, a town of 100,000.
“We slept under a piece of plastic erected on some wood boards we found. We have 10 children in our family, they are getting sick. Everyone needs a tent, snow is coming. It’s a disaster.”
Ergun Ozmen, 37, was carrying loaves of bread after queuing for food.
“People are taking 10 tents and selling them. It’s a disgrace. I slept in the municipal park all night in the rain. My shoes are filled with water. I only registered to get a tent this morning as I have been busy burying the dead,” he said.
The death toll rose to 534, with 2,300 injured in the biggest quake in more than a decade in Turkey.
The Disaster and Emergency Administration said 185 had been rescued from collapsed buildings since the quake.
Searches for survivors went on at some sites but at others rescuers stopped work. The bodies of a mother and her baby were pulled out from one building during the night, witnesses said.
Answering Turkey’s call for help in the form of tents, prefabricated housing and containers, foreign aid began pouring in with the first planeloads landing from France, Ukraine – and Israel, despite poor relations between the two countries.
British Home Secretary Theresa May, who is visiting Turkey, said London would send 1,144 protective winter tents. Saudi television reported Saudi Arabia would give Turkey $50mn for quake relief.
The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) was providing 400 winterised tents, each able to hold five people.
An OCHA spokeswoman said Erzurum, a city 260km northwest of Ercis, would be a hub for international assistance sent by plane. Van had been asked to establish a centre for assistance coming overland, she said.
After days of survivors lining up and sometimes arguing outside distribution centres, the government announced it would no longer hand out tents but would deliver them to those whose homes were deemed unsafe to make sure the neediest got them.
“We will no longer give a tent to whoever asks for one. We will identify the buildings that are unusable and we will deliver the tents ourselves,” Environment and Urban Planning Minister Erdogan Bayraktar said, urging survivors to return to homes that were not structurally damaged.
“We will be distributing the tents in a more disciplined manner. We have 6,000 tents in hand and more are coming. Soon we will start the delivery of containers to villages.”
But Mehmet Yildiz, a 50-year-old shop owner who has a two-storey house in the city of Van, said he and his family of 10 were too afraid to go back to his house.
“My house is full of cracks. Whatever the government thinks I am not going inside the house. We are having our kids sleep in the car and the rest of us roam all night long in the streets.
“They say they won’t give me a tent because my house is not destroyed,” he told Reuters under an umbrella in the rain.
Agriculture Minister Mehdi Eker said the government would distribute special tents to house cattle and sheep in mud-brick villages, which have suffered the worst damage and where 3,088 barns have been destroyed.
