The official death toll from the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and neighbouring Syria has risen to more than 11,200, as the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, toured the stricken epicentre.
Rejecting mounting criticism of the authorities’ response to Monday’s 7.8-magnitude quake and calls for the government to send more help to the disaster zone, Erdoğan, visiting the worst-hit provinces of Hatay and Kahramanmaraş, said on Wednesday the rescue operation was getting better by the day.
The Turkish president said 8,754 people had so far been confirmed dead in the earthquake in Turkey, while Syria’s civil defence updated its toll to 2,470. Experts have predicted the total will climb further and could double.
Erdoğan urged citizens to ignore “provocateurs” who he accused of fanning anger over the slow pace of the rescue operation. Several people have been arrested over social media posts in the quake’s aftermath.
The initial powerful tremor was followed within hours by a second almost as powerful quake, toppling thousands of buildings including hospitals, schools and blocks of flats, injuring tens of thousands pf people and leaving countless numbers homeless.
As an army of rescuers continued to comb through the rubble of collapsed buildings in freezing temperatures, the World Health Organization chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said it was now “a race against time” to find those feared trapped.
The WHO has predicted up to 23 million people could be affected by the massive earthquake and urged countries to rush help to the disaster zone. Dozens, including the US, China and multiple EU states have pledged help, and search teams as well as relief supplies have begun to arrive by air.
A winter storm has complicated the rescue effort, however, with many roads – some of them damaged by the quake – rendered almost impassable, resulting in traffic jams that stretch for miles in some regions.
Criticism continued to mount over what many in Turkey described as a slow and inadequate response to the disaster, with much anger also focused on an “earthquake tax” levied by the Turkish government more than two decades ago.
The estimated 88bn lira (£3.8bn) levy, raised in 1999 after more than 17,000 people were killed in another powerful quake in north-western Turkey, was intended to be spent on disaster prevention and better emergency services, but little information is available about how it has been used.
Erdoğan has declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. But residents in several damaged cities voiced anger and despair over the authorities’ response. “There is not even a single person here. We are under the snow, without a home, without anything,” Murat Alinak, whose home in Malatya collapsed and whose relatives are missing, told Reuters. “What shall I do, where can I go?”
People in remote towns in southern Turkey described how relief efforts were stretched to breaking point, amid the destruction that spanned a border region almost 650 miles long.
Despite critical need to reach survivors quickly, no rescue teams arrived in the city of Gaziantep in the first 12 hours after the disaster, forcing victims’ relatives and local police to clear the ruins by hand, witnesses told AFP. When the rescuers finally came on Monday evening, they only worked for a few hours before breaking for the night, residents told the news agency.
Many Turks vented their anger online over what they said was a negligent emergency response in the southernmost province of Hatay, complaining that rescue efforts had failed to reach the area.
In Hatay, the quake levelled government buildings including the local chapter of Turkey’s disaster relief agency, the AFAD.
“I am so angry,” said the analyst Gönül Tol, of the Middle East Institute in Washington. “People are trying to dig out loved ones trapped under rubble. It is cold, raining, no electricity. One family member is trapped under a heavy concrete slab, waiting for rescue workers for hours.”
Without enough rescuers, volunteers say they will have to step in and do the hard work themselves.
“We go to places to help people who were originally supposed to be rescued by the Red Crescent, but where no help comes,” said Ceren Soylu, a member of a volunteer group set up by the rightwing opposition İyi party.
Murat Harun Öngören, a coordinator with Akut, Turkey’s largest civil society aid and rescue organisation, said efforts to reach those affected across southern Turkey had been severely impeded by the cold weather and icy conditions, as well as the sheer size of the affected area. “We often define major earthquakes as disasters. This is more than an earthquake, this is a disaster,” he said.
The coordinator said those trapped beneath rubble were in increasing danger with each passing hour. “To ensure people get the proper help might not be easy for the first 72 hours after such major and catastrophic earthquakes,” he said. “Team coordination, transportation and logistical issues are not easy.”
Öngören also said the true number of collapsed buildings was likely to greatly exceed the confirmed tally so far, adding: “When you combine the number of these collapsed buildings with other criteria, I can say that we are faced with a difficult operation.”
Aid officials voiced particular concern about the situation in Syria, already afflicted by a humanitarian crisis after nearly 12 years of civil war. Syrian authorities have reported deaths as far south as Hama, 150 miles (250km) from the epicentre.
Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report
