As time goes on and the death toll steadily rises in Turkey and Syria from the massive earthquakes a week ago — and with hopes of finding people alive amid the rubble all but gone — homeless, grief-stricken and, in many instances, injured survivors struggle mightily in frigid temperatures amid the total devastation all around them. And anger is mounting amid the despair.
The combined death toll was nearing 36,000 in Turkey and government- and rebel-held parts of Syria, authorities said.
Rescuers pulled a 40-year-old woman from the wreckage of a 5-story building in the town of Islahiye, in Gaziantep province Monday. She was rescued after spending 170 hours beneath the rubble by a mixed crew that included members of Turkey’s coal mine rescue team. Earlier, a 60-year-woman was pulled from the rubble in the town of Besni, in Adiyaman province, by teams from the western city of Manisa.
But Eduardo Reinoso Angulo, a professor at the Institute of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico said the likelihood of finding people alive was “very, very small now.” He said the odds of survival for people trapped in wreckage fall dramatically after five days, and is near zero after nine days, although there have been exceptions.
Reports of rescues are coming less often as the time since the quakes reaches the limits of the human body’s ability to survive without water, especially in sub-freezing temperatures.
During a visit to Aleppo in northern Syria Monday, United Nations aid chief Martin Griffith said the rescue phase is “coming to a close” and attention is now turning to providing food, shelter, food, schooling and psychosocial care, according to the Reuters news service.
On the day of the devastating 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes in southeastern Turkey and neighboring northern Syria, Zafer Mahmut Boncuk’s apartment building collapsed. He discovered his 75-year-old mother was still alive – but pinned under the wreckage.
For hours, Boncuk frantically searched for someone in the ancient, devastated Turkish city of Antakya to help him free her. He was able to talk to her, hold her hand and give her water. Despite his pleas, however, no one came, and she died on Tuesday, the day after the quake.
Like many others in Turkey, his sorrow and disbelief have turned to rage over the sense that there has been an unfair and ineffective response to the historic disaster. (CBS)