Istanbul: Two days after a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed more than 11,600 people in Turkey and Syria, families huddled in the cold rain, hitching tarps to make improvised tents, resting on bits of furniture pulled from the wreckage and lining up for shoes, blankets — anything available.
“There were children huddled around fires to try and stay warm, and a lot of people sleeping in their cars — entire families,” said Okke Bouwman, a rescue worker for Save the Children, in the Turkish city of Gaziantep.
Buildings fell across streets, rendering them impassible, and a fire station in Pazarcik was turned into a makeshift funeral home. Cracks in the walls of buildings that still stood were wide enough to reach through. Broken glass litters the ground, threatening to slash the feet of survivors, many of whom are shoeless and still in the sleeping clothes they wore when the quake struck two days ago.
• President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, the country’s paramount politician for 20 years, made his first visit to the disaster zone on Wednesday to tell his people how much his government had already done to help, while urging that citizens “show patience” as more aid made its way to them. But residents in many cities and town are still waiting for help, and criticism of the government’s disaster response would only add to headwinds to Erdogan’s quest for re-election in May.
• Syria’s more than decade-long civil war is complicating efforts to get aid to the country. Many refugees displaced by the fighting live in the quake-stricken area of Turkey, and while no aid was crossing into Syria, bodies were.
• The humanitarian crisis has prompted Turks around the world to rally together and raise money and gather supplies to send home. Their efforts ranged from a bake sale in London to the gathering of donations at a nursing home in Berlin.
• The death toll in Turkey has risen to 9,057, Mr. Erdogan said. Deaths have been reported in 11 provinces in southern Turkey, Vice President Fuat Oktay said on Tuesday. Rescue missions will focus on some of the hardest-hit provinces: Hatay, Adiyaman and Kahramanmaras. In Syria, where more than a decade of civil war had already created a humanitarian crisis, at least 2,612 people died in the quake, according to the state Health Ministry and the White Helmets relief group. Thousands more were injured across the country.
The death toll in northwestern Syria has risen to more than 1,400, the White Helmets relief group said, bringing the number of deaths across the country to at least 2,662.
