ADANA, Turkey (AP) — Emergency crews in Turkey and Syria were working in bitter cold early Tuesday in hopes of pulling more survivors from the rubble after a 7.8-magnitude quake hit more than 4,000 lives and demolished thousands of buildings across a vast region.
Authorities feared the death toll from Monday’s quake and its aftershocks would continue to rise, as rescuers searched for survivors among twisted metal and broken concrete in a region ravaged by 12 years of Syria’s civil war and a subsequent refugee crisis.
Survivors were crying out desperately for help among the mountains of rubble, and rescuers managed to keep working in the rain and snow. Seismic activity continued to shake the region, including a new earthquake almost as strong as the initial one. Rescue workers carefully removed large chunks of concrete so that bodies could be removed as desperate families waited impatiently for news about their loved ones.
“My grandson is one and a half years old. Please help them please. They were on the 12th floor, ”Imran Bahur implored Monday next to the remains of the building in which he lived in the Turkish city of Adana.
Tens of thousands of people who lost their homes in Turkey and Syria were facing a freezing night. In the Turkish city of Gaziantep, a provincial capital located about 33 kilometers (20 miles) from the epicenter, people took shelter in shopping malls, stadiums, mosques and community centers. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared seven days of national mourning.
The quake, centered in Turkey’s southeastern Kahramanmaras province, forced residents of Damascus and Beirut to rush onto the streets and was felt as far away as Cairo.
The quake also brought further pain to a region that has suffered greatly over the past decade. On the Syrian side of the border, the area is divided between government-held territory and the last stronghold of the opposition, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces. Turkey, meanwhile, is home to millions of refugees from the Syrian civil war.
In the rebel stronghold, hundreds of families were still trapped in the rubble, the opposition emergency organization known as the White Helmets said. The area is home to around 4 million people who were displaced from other parts of the country because of the war. Many of them live in buildings that have already been destroyed by military bombing.
Battered medical centers and hospitals quickly filled with the wounded, according to rescue workers. Others, such as a maternity hospital, had to be evacuated, according to the SAMS medical organization.
More than 7,800 people were rescued in 10 Turkish provinces, said Orhan Tatar, an official with the national authority for emergency management.
The region sits on large seismic fault lines and is prone to tremors. Some 18,000 people were killed in 1999 by similar earthquakes in northwestern Turkey.
The US Geological Survey recorded Monday’s earthquake as a magnitude 7.8 at a depth of 18 kilometers (11 miles). Hours later, and more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) away, a magnitude 7.5 quake was recorded, possibly an aftershock of the first.
A video shows how a multi-story residential building collapsed in the Turkish city of Sanliurfa due to the second tremor, generating a huge cloud of dust and the screams of the people who were in the place.
Thousands of collapsed buildings were reported in a wide area stretching from the Syrian cities of Aleppo and Hama to Diyarbakir, Turkey, more than 330 kilometers (200 miles) away to the northeast.
In Turkey alone, more than 5,600 buildings were destroyed, authorities reported. Hospitals were damaged and one of them collapsed in the city of Iskenderun.
Cold temperatures could shorten the time rescuers have to save survivors trapped in rubble, said Dr Steven Godby, a natural disasters expert at Nottingham Trent University. The difficulty of working in areas affected by civil war could further complicate rescue efforts, he added.
Dozens of countries, as well as the European Union and NATO, were quick to offer assistance ranging from search and rescue crews to medical supplies and funds. The vast majority of them went to Turkey, but Russia and even Israel have promised to help the Syrian government, although it is unknown whether the ravaged rebel stronghold in the country’s northwest would receive assistance.
The opposition group Syrian Civil Defense described the situation in the area as “disastrous”.
The opposition-controlled area, located in Idlib province, has been under siege for years, and Russian and government shelling is frequent. The territory is dependent on the flow of aid from Turkey for things like food and medical supplies.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said 224 buildings in northwestern Syria were destroyed and at least 325 damaged, including aid warehouses. The United Nations has been sending aid to 2.7 million people each month via shipments from across the border, which could be affected.
At an Idlib hospital, Osama Abdel Hamid said most of his neighbors were killed when the four-story building they lived in collapsed. While trying to escape with his wife and his three children, a wooden door fell on them, protecting them from the other debris”.
“God gave me new life,” he declared.
In Azmarin, a small rebel town in the Syrian mountains near the border with Turkey, residents and rescue workers brought the bodies of several children wrapped in sheets to a hospital.
In the town of Kahramanmaras, rescuers pulled two children alive from the rubble, and one of them could be seen lying on a stretcher placed on the snowy ground. Turkish network CNN Turk reported that a woman was saved in Gaziantep after a trained dog detected her.
In Adana, about 20 people, some wearing emergency services jackets, used power saws on top of a collapsed building to clear space for survivors to get out or be rescued.
Hours earlier in Adana, a survivor could be heard shouting through the rubble: “I have no more strength” as rescuers tried to reach him, said Muhammet Fatih Yavuz, a local resident.
In Diyarbakir, hundreds of first responders and civilians lined up through a massive rubble pile, shuffling chunks of concrete, personal belongings and other debris as they searched for trapped survivors as bulldozers removed debris from below.
At least 2,921 people were killed and nearly 16,000 injured in 10 Turkish provinces, according to Turkish authorities. The number of deaths in areas under Syrian government control rose to 656, with around 1,400 injured, according to the Health Ministry. In the rebel-held northwestern region of the country, groups operating in the area reported at least 450 deaths and several hundred wounded.
Huseyin Yayman, a lawmaker from Turkey’s Hatay province, said several of his relatives were trapped under the rubble of their homes.
“There are many other people who are also trapped,” he said in a telephone interview with HaberTurk television. “There are many damaged buildings. There are people in the streets. It’s raining, it’s winter.”
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Alsayed reported from Azmarin, Syria, and Fraser from Ankara, Turkey. Associated Press journalists Zeynep Bilginsoy, in Istanbul; Bassem Mroue and Kareem Chehayeb, in Beirut; and Kim Tong-hyung, in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.