Turkey Earthquake: After receiving criticism for his government’s response to the devastating earthquake that has killed over 15,000 people in Turkey and Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan admitted “shortcomings” on Wednesday.
The disaster’s huge scale, which resulted in the destruction of thousands of structures and the entrapment of an undetermined number of people, has overloaded rescue operations that were already hampered by the bitter cold.
The survivors were left to search for food and shelter and, in some cases, watch helplessly as their family members cried out for aid before going silent under the rubble.
“My nephew, my sister-in-law and my sister-in-law’s sister are in the ruins. They are trapped under the ruins and there is no sign of life,” said Semire Coban, a kindergarten teacher, in Turkey’s Hatay.
“We can’t reach them. We are trying to talk to them, but they are not responding… We are waiting for help. It has been 48 hours now,” she said.
Even though the death toll is still rising three days after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake, which is already one of the deadliest this century, searchers kept finding survivors amid the rubble.
Erdogan visited one of the hardest-hit areas, the earthquake epicentre Kahramanmaras, as online criticism of the reaction grew.
“Of course, there are shortcomings. The conditions are clear to see. It’s not possible to be ready for a disaster like this,” he said.
According to AFP journalists and the site monitoring service NetBlocks, Twitter was also not working on Turkish mobile networks.
Turkey Geography
One of the seismically active regions on the planet is at the Turkish-Syrian border. Turkey hasn’t had an earthquake of this size since 33,000 people died in the eastern region of Erzincan in 1939. More than 17,000 people died in a 7.4 magnitude earthquake in 1999.
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