The death toll from the earthquake that devastated Turkey and Syria surpassed 11,000 Wednesday as rescuers toiled through the night in frigid temperatures in a frantic — and increasingly desperate — race against time to find survivors.
The tally was expected to rise even higher as hundreds of collapsed buildings in many cities have become tombs for people who had been asleep in their beds when the initial 7.8 magnitude quake hit in the early morning on Monday.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that the death toll in the country has reached 8,754 as he visited a “tent city” in Kahramanmaras where people left homeless by the disaster are living.
Speaking to reporters, with constant ambulance sirens in the background, Erdogan acknowledged there had been problems early on in the response but vowed that everything would get better by the day and that no one would “be left in the streets.”
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
“On the first day we experienced some issues but then on the second day and today the situation is under control."
The government plans to build housing within one year for those left without a home in the 10 provinces affected, he added. The area is home to some 13.5 million people.
The most destructive in decades, the initial tremor wrought havoc on hospitals, airports, and roads, and knocked down more than 6,400 buildings in Turkey.
Many residents have since complained about insufficient resources and slow emergency response.
In the Turkish city of Malatya, bodies were placed side by side on the ground, covered in blankets, while rescuers waited for funeral vehicles to pick them up, according to former journalist Ozel Pikal who saw eight bodies pulled from the ruins of a building.
Ozel Pikal
“Today isn’t a pleasant day, because as of today there is no hope left in Malatya. No one is coming out alive from the rubble.”
There was a shortage of rescuers in the area he was in, and the cold hampered rescue efforts by volunteers and government teams, Pikal said.
Families in southern Turkey and in Syria spent a second night in the freezing cold as overwhelmed rescuers tried to pull people from the rubble.
In Syria, already devastated by 11 years of war, the confirmed toll climbed to more than 2,500 overnight, according to the Syrian government and a rescue service operating in the rebel-held northwest.
Standing around the wreckage of what had been a 32-apartment building, relatives of people who had lived there said they had seen no one removed alive. A lack of heavy equipment to remove large concrete slabs was impeding rescue efforts.
Aid efforts in Syria have been hampered by the ongoing civil war and the isolation of the rebel-held region along the border, which is surrounded by Russia-backed government forces. Syria itself is an international pariah under Western sanctions linked to the war.
While concerns are rising for those still trapped, Polish rescuers working in Turkey said they had pulled nine people alive from the rubble so far, including parents with two children and a 13-year-old girl from the ruins in the city of Besni.