Thinly stretched rescue teams on Wednesday, February 8, 2023 continued searching for survivors buried in the rubble of thousands of buildings destroyed in Turkey and Syria by catastrophic earthquake and Aftershocks that killed about 12,000 people.
The rescue workers in Kahramanmaraş said they could smell corpses as they dug through piles of debris in the centre of a town now so devastated by the earthquake and its aftershocks that many buildings have been reduced entirely to rubble.
“We hope there are two people still alive under there,” said Zafer Yildiz, a volunteer, pointing towards a pile of concrete, twisted metal and furniture. “Most of the people we found under the rubble were dead,” he said.
Mehmet Boskert carefully extracted a prayer book from the remains of a multistorey building, as he dug with gloved hands in the hope of finding his brother and sister-in-law alive.
“After I managed to dig myself out from the rubble when my house collapsed, I came here to try to find them,” he said. “I can only hope, but it seems too late. The emergency teams arrived too late, and only today did they bring these diggers. I hope they can do something.”
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, visited Kahramanmaraş on Wednesday, February 8, 2023 to meet survivors now living in tents in the town’s stadium. He pledged that “we will never let our citizens stay on the street” and promised financial aid and compensation for repairs.
Meanwhile, people wrapped themselves in blankets as they searched for shelter in the local park, named after the day that Erdoğan’s government repelled an attempted coup.
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: "It seems too Late", Hope Fading in Turkey’s search for Earthquake Survivors){kind=link}
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