Despair grows as earthquake research efforts in Turkey enter day four

Dense smoke rises over the bay of İskenderun in southern Turkey, the cars form a long traffic jam before leaving, an eloquent sign of the catastrophe that has hit the center of İskenderun.

Monday’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit İskenderun hard, destroying several buildings, including a public hospital and a church, setting fire to the port and causing flooding from the sea that forced hundreds of people to evacuate.

Upon entering the city centre, the sight of the destruction is startlingly vivid, with every second building on the main İbrahim Karaoğlanoğlu Street destroyed, trapping hundreds of people under debris as they slept and in the winter cold.

There is debris on both sides of the road, the sound of excavators mixing with ambulance sirens and car horns.

Atop a destroyed six-story building, a rescuer signals silence as onlookers watch. “Can anyone hear me?” the worker shouts through a tiny hole, but there is no answer.

The building next door is also in danger of collapsing: a bed hangs from the destroyed wall, a doll is on the glass-strewn floor.

Hulusi Çelikoğlu watches desperately as teams struggle to reach at least two people believed to be alive in the collapsed six-story building. His daughter Aycan, 18, is one of them.

“Yesterday the teams heard my daughter’s voice. She is on the third floor and she confirmed her identity to a Spanish team,” said Hulusi, adding that rescue efforts were halted by a lack of professional equipment.

The Spanish team, which was the only one equipped with sensitive seismic sensors to find the entombed, set off to work on another pile of debris. A private company provided a crane and a power generator, while military personnel and volunteers joined the rescue efforts.

A woman texted her relatives from under the same debris overnight, identifying herself as a teacher, Hulusi says. More than 70 people are thought to be trapped in the building, where rescue efforts were taking time as the next damaged building was in danger of collapsing.

“Between then and noon, no one came back to help. In the meantime we removed some corpses with our bare hands. We are helpless, where is the state?” Hulusi exclaims. He drove from Izmir 1,000 kilometers west upon hearing the news.

The 25-year-old son of Ahmet Altun, Celal, is trapped under the same rubble.

“We spoke on the phone hours before the earthquake. He was fine,” Altun says.

“I have no more words. Will this place be my son’s grave?” Altun adds with teary eyes, referring to the slow rescue efforts.

Along the main road, rescue teams struggle tirelessly in hopes of finding someone alive under the many collapsed buildings.

“There’s not enough coordination, we’re doing our best,” says a Marine soldier who joins the rescue effort, without giving his name.

Surrounded by green hills with summer houses and olive groves, the coastal city of İskenderun has been a center of attraction, commerce and industry for the region.

Once the radiant shops and restaurants along the coast are deserted, residents scramble for safety. Military vessels have evacuated some of the wounded to the port of Mersin, 200 kilometers to the west.

A few blocks away, families take refuge in a public park where disaster authority AFAD has set up tents. Volunteers from all over the country distribute food and clothing. On the next street, people are taking away everything they can find from a deserted chain store.

Chaos ensues as a military truck brings blankets and diapers to the park. Volunteer and state aid is coming but it takes time and the distribution is not organised, complains Mehmet Şehi, who takes diapers for his 2-month-old baby.

Şehi, his wife Gamze and their five children try to sleep in a makeshift tent.

“There aren’t enough tents, so we built a shelter with the material he could find on the street. It’s especially difficult with the baby,” says Gamze.

Facing the next tent, Songül sits around a campfire, looking down at her paralyzed 14-year-old son lying on the ground inside.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Wednesday that new houses will be built within a year and no citizen will be left uncovered.

Erdoğan’s government has been criticized for its belated disaster response, lack of preparedness and for neglecting poor construction standards in the earthquake-prone country of 85 million.

Providing shelter appears to remain a key issue, especially in midwinter. Some volunteers have brought caravans, container homes or have offered their homes on social media, but Songül says it won’t be enough.

She fears being replaced and not being able to afford the high rents of a new home as relatively safer homes are expected to be in high demand and price speculation could follow in the coming weeks.

“We are too afraid to go home along the flooded coast. We don’t know where to go.”