Turkey Earthquake Death Toll Over 7.800 People, Rescue Team Race Against Time and Winter

The impact of the earthquake in Turkey. (Wikimedia Commons/VOA)

JAKARTA - The death toll from devastating earthquakes in southern Turkey and Syria jumped to more than 7.800 on Tuesday, as rescue teams worked against time in harsh winter conditions to search for survivors from the rubble of collapsed buildings.

As the scale of the disaster became clearer, the death toll was likely to rise significantly. A UN official said thousands of children may have died.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. However, residents in some of the damaged Turkish cities voiced anger and despair at what they said was the authorities' slow and inadequate response to the deadliest earthquake to hit Turkey since 1999.

"There isn't even a single person here. We are under the snow, without a house, without anything," said Murat Alinak, whose house in Malatya has collapsed and relatives are missing.

"What should I do, where can I go?" he said.

Monday's magnitude 7.8 quake, followed a few hours later by a second nearly as strong, toppled thousands of buildings including hospitals, schools and apartment blocks, injured tens of thousands of people, leaving many homeless in Turkey and northern Syria.

Rescue workers are struggling to reach some of the worst-hit areas, held back by destroyed roads, bad weather and a lack of resources and heavy equipment. Some areas without fuel and electricity.

With little direct assistance, residents retrieved the rubble sometimes without even the basic tools in the desperate search for survivors.

The impact of the earthquake in Turkey. (Wikimedia Commons/Mahmut Bozarslan/VOA)

Aid officials voiced particular concern about the situation in Syria, which has been gripped by a humanitarian crisis after nearly 12 years of civil war.

President Erdogan declared 10 Turkish provinces a disaster zone and imposed a three-month state of emergency, allowing the government to bypass parliament in enacting new laws and limiting or suspending rights and freedoms.

The government will open a hotel in the tourism hub of Antalya to temporarily accommodate people affected by the quake, President Erdogan said.

Meanwhile, the death toll in Turkey rose to 5.894, said Vice President Fuat Oktay, with more than 34.000 injured. In Syria, the death toll is at least 1.932, according to the government and rescue services in the rebel-held northwest.

Turkish authorities say about 13.5 million people were affected in the region which stretches some 450 km (280 miles) from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east, and 300 km from Malatya in the north to Hatay in the south. Meanwhile, the Syrian authorities have reported deaths to Hama, which is about 250 km from the epicenter.

"It's now a race against time," said Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Geneva.

"Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors are decreasing," he said.

Across the region, rescuers toiled day and night as people waited in anguish among piles of clinging debris in the hope that friends, relatives and neighbors might be found alive.

In Antakya, capital of Hatay province which borders Syria, rescue teams were few and far between and residents picked up the rubble themselves. People begged for helmets, hammers, iron rods and ropes.

More than 12.000 Turkish search and rescue personnel are working in the affected areas, along with 9.000 soldiers. Meanwhile, more than 70 countries offered rescue teams and other assistance.

But the large scale of the disaster was frightening.

"The area is huge. I've never seen anything like it before," said Johannes Gust, from Germany's fire and rescue service, as he loaded equipment onto a truck at Adana airport.

Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority said 5.775 buildings had been destroyed by the quake and 20.426 people were injured.

The plan is for two US Agency for International Development teams with 80 people and 12 dogs each to arrive Wednesday morning in Turkey and head to the southeastern province of Adiyaman to focus on urban search and rescue.

Meanwhile in Syria, many buildings collapsed and infrastructure was damaged, making it difficult for rescue teams to carry out search and rescue.

"There were many efforts made by our team, but they were unable to respond to the disaster and many buildings collapsed," said group leader Raed al-Saleh.

The impact of the earthquake in Turkey. (Wikimedia Commons/Mahmut Bozarslan/VOA)

A UN humanitarian official in Syria said fuel shortages and bad weather were creating obstacles.

"The infrastructure is damaged, the roads that we used to use for humanitarian work are damaged," UN resident coordinator El-Mostafa Benlamlih told Reuters from Damascus.

Meanwhile Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General António Guterres told a briefing the crossing was "actually intact" and continued to be used as a trans-shipment hub. However, he said the road leading to the crossing had been damaged and it was "temporarily impairing our ability to use it fully," as quoted CNN.

For your information, Bab al-Hawa is the only UN-approved humanitarian aid corridor between Syria and Turkey.

In January, UN Secretary General Guterres described land crossings as an "indispensable lifeline" after the UN Security Council voted to renew the border crossing mechanism a day before it ended.

The situation on the ground after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked Turkey and Syria on Monday was "more dangerous" in Syria, according to the Director of the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) Foundation in Turkey.

"This is a disastrous situation in both Turkey and Syria, even though Syria is more dangerous," said Dr. Bachir Tajaldin.

More than a decade of conflict in northern Syria has prompted a "terrible economic situation" making it very difficult to respond to the current crisis, according to Tajaldin.

In contrast, "the situation in Turkey is coordinated through a very well-established government," he explained, adding that in northern Syria "most of the services are provided by NGOs" due to a lack of long-term investment in recovery and infrastructure.