IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Turkish quake survivors plead for tents

Tens of thousands of people spent a second night under canvas, in cars or huddled round small fires in towns rattled by aftershocks from a massive earthquake in eastern Turkey that killed hundreds.
/ Source: msnbc.com news services

Tens of thousands of people spent a second night under canvas, in cars or huddled round small fires in towns rattled by aftershocks from a massive earthquake in eastern Turkey that killed hundreds.

By late Monday the death toll from Sunday's quake had crept up to 279, but hundreds more were still missing after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey on Sunday. 

Casualties were concentrated in the town of Ercis and the provincial capital Van, with officials still checking and confirming fatalities in outlying villages.

"It was like the judgment day," said Mesut Ozan Yilmaz, 18, who survived for 32 hours under the rubble of a tea house where he had been passing time with friends.

Unhurt, but lying on a hospital bed under a thick blanket, his face still blackened by dust and dirt, Yilmaz gave a chilling account to CNN Turk news channel of how he survived by diving under the table.

"The space we had was so narrow. People were fighting for more space to survive," Yilmaz said. "I rested my head on a dead man's foot. I know I would be dead now if I had let myself go psychologically."

Keeping vigil
As grieving families prepared on Tuesday to bury their dead, others kept vigil by the mounds of concrete rubble and masonry, praying rescue teams would find missing loved ones alive.

Rescue teams concentrated efforts in Ercis, a town of 100,000 that was worst hit by the 7.2 magnitude tremor.

The Turkish Red Crescent distributed up to 13,000 tents, and was preparing to provide temporary shelter for around 40,000 people, although there were no reliable estimates of the number of people left destitute.

The relief agency was criticized for failing to ensure that some of the most needy, particularly in villages, received tents as temperatures plummeted overnight.

"We were sent 25 tents for 150 homes. Everybody is waiting outside, we've got small children, we've got nothing left," Ahmet Arikes, the 60-year-old headman of Amik, a village outside Van that was reduced to rubble.

Television images showed desperate men pushing roughly to grab tents from the back of a Red Crescent truck.

"I didn't think the Red Crescent was successful enough in giving away tents. There is a problem on that matter," Huseyin Celik, deputy chairman of the ruling AK Party, told the CNN Turk news channel. "I apologize to our people."

Soon after, the relief agency's chairman told the news channel that 12,000 more tents would be delivered to Van on Tuesday. Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay, overseeing relief operations in Van, promised: "From today there will be nothing our people lack."

Earlier Monday, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan to offer condolences for those killed in a devastating earthquake and said the Jewish state was ready to help, officials of both countries said.

Relations between Israel and Turkey have been frayed since Israeli commandos killed nine Turks during a raid on an aid flotilla bound for the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip in 2010.

Turkey has received offers of assistance from countries as far as China and Pakistan but so far has accepted aid only from Iran and Azerbaijan.

'Turkey is thankful'
Arinc denied Turkey had declined an offer of aid from Israel. "Our ties with Israel may not be at desired levels, but it's out of the question to refuse humanitarian offers," Arinc told a news conference.

"Turkey is thankful and respects all countries who offered help," he said, but cautioned that "if aid from all countries arrived in Van it would be chaos".

The bustling city of Van sustained substantial damage, but Interior Minister Idris Naim Sahin said search efforts there were winding down.

"I just felt the whole earth moving and I was petrified. It went on for ages. And the noise, you could hear this loud, loud noise," said Hakan Demirtas, 32, a builder who was working on construction site in Van at the time.

"My house is ruined," he said, sitting on a low wall after spending the night in the open. "I am still afraid, I'm in shock. I have no future, there is nothing I can do."

The worst-hit area was the the city of Ercis, where about 80 multistory buildings collapsed. The eastern city of 75,000 lies close to the Iranian border in one of Turkey's most earthquake-prone zones.

Dozens of the dead were placed in body bags or covered by blankets, laid down in rows so people could search for their missing relatives.

"It's my grandson's wife. She was stuck underneath rubble," said Mehmet Emin Umac.

'Be patient'
Some desperate survivors cried for help from beneath mounds of smashed concrete and twisted metal.

"Be patient, be patient," rescuers told a whimpering boy, pinned under a concrete slab with the lifeless hand of an adult, with a wedding ring, visible just in front of his face.

A Reuters photographer saw a woman and her daughter being freed from beneath a concrete slab in the wreckage of a building that had once been six stories tall.

"I'm here, I'm here," the woman, named Fidan, called out in a hoarse voice. Talking to her regularly while working for more than two hours to find a way through, rescuers cut through the slab, first sighting the daughter's foot, before freeing them.

More than 2,000 teams with a dozen sniffer dogs were involved in search-and-rescue and aid efforts, and more often than not they found dead bodies, not survivors. Cranes and other heavy equipment lifted slabs of concrete, allowing residents to dig for the missing with shovels.
Those efforts were hampered by over 200 aftershocks that rocked the area, with one on Monday rising up to 5.0 magnitude.

Leaders around the world, including President Barack Obama, conveyed their condolences and offered assistance.

"We stand shoulder to shoulder with our Turkish ally in this difficult time, and are ready to assist," Obama said.

Turkey lies in one of the world's most active seismic zones and is crossed by numerous fault lines. In 1999, two earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 struck northwestern Turkey, killing about 18,000 people.

Istanbul, the country's largest city with more than 12 million people, lies in northwestern Turkey near a major fault line, and experts say tens of thousands could be killed if a major quake struck there.