Turkey struggles to shelter quake victims

TURKEY struggled to provide shelter yesterday to tens of thousands left homeless by an earthquake that killed nearly 500, and rescue teams began taking painful decisions to call off searches for those buried alive.

Three days after the 7.2-magnitude quake shook eastern Turkey, demolishing 3,000 buildings, rescue workers pulled a 27-year-old woman and an 18-year-old student alive from collapsed buildings in Ercis, the town hit hardest. At another crumpled building in the town, rescue workers who had worked non-stop for more than 48 hours switched off their generators and lights, convinced no one was left alive. Seconds later, they received word someone trapped below had made mobile phone contact.

“There are three people trapped under there. When we lifted a concrete slab, the phone must have been able to get reception,” said one rescue worker, as the lights were turned back on and his team returned to their job.

But hopes of finding more survivors were fading as time passed, and attention was shifting to the Herculean task of providing shelter to victims for the approaching winter.

The disaster is one more curse for Kurds, the dominant ethnic group in the impoverished southeast, where more than 40,000 people have been killed in a three-decade-long separatist insurgency.

Perceptions of government neglect in meeting people’s needs at a moment of crisis would complicate Ankara’s efforts to win over ordinary Kurds to its side in the conflict.

Sunday’s quake, Turkey’s strongest in a decade, has spurred the government to accept offers of tents and prefabricated houses from other countries, including from Israel, despite high tensions between the two.

A Turkish foreign ministry official said an Israeli plane was expected to arrive in Ankara last night with five prefabricated houses. Despite the humanitarian gesture, both countries played down prospects of their troubled relations being on the mend.

With temperatures falling and rain forecast to turn to snow this week, there were growing complaints of a lack of tents and of poor organisation.

At one warehouse in Van, about 100 people looted Red Crescent trucks carrying food, blankets, carpets and clothes. A handful of police officers appeared powerless to stop them.

“We need an order, an organisation here. What kind of help is this? These people are looting, not receiving aid!” one old man cried.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said the death toll from the quake that struck mountainous Van province near the Iranian border stood at 461, with 1,352 people injured.

The governor of Van province said 3,000 buildings had collapsed or were made useless. He estimated that 600,000 people had been “affected” by the quake, but not all needed temporary accommodation. The exact number of homeless was unclear.

“Some residents with no damage in their homes are unable to go back because of the aftershocks. That is why everyone wants tents,” Governor Munir Karaloglu said. “We estimate the total number of people affected is 600,000.”

Having started out by saying Turkey could handle the disaster alone, Erdogan’s government has put out requests to 30 countries, including Israel, for emergency materials including prefabricated housing, tents and containers.