Quake victims complain of slow assistance

Rescue efforts continued on Friday after a deadly earthquake struck the eastern Turkish town of Bingol one day earlier, with survivors now demanding quicker government response. At least 130 people have now been confirmed dead and hundreds more injured when the quake ripped through the town of 70,000 people in the early hours of Thursday, catching many residents as they slept. “None of the buildings are safe,” Antika Bektas maintained as she showed IRIN the interior of her damaged ground floor apartment. While the hundred or so newly constructed four storey blocks in Bingol’s Karsiyaka district appear unscathed from the outside, a quick glimpse inside reveals another, more serious, story altogether. Pointing to the buckled walls, cracked beams and exposed wires in dismay, the 40-year-old said she had no plans to return and was now waiting for outside assistance. "We need houses, we can’t live here now." Hasbi Barca, her 41-year-old neighbour agrees. The teacher and father-of-three told IRIN he was now homeless. “We have nowhere else to go,” he said. “We aren’t waiting for help. We are waiting for a solution.” But his wait could prove a long one; with many residents feeling assistance has been slow in coming altogether. “For two days we have seen no food, no help and no government officials,” Jale Batur, a 38-year-old housewife in an adjacent block cried out. “What we have, we have provided ourselves.” One official from the Turkish Red Crescent told IRIN while there were no urgent needs at the moment, saying that they had enough food and tents to provide the necessary relief for those in need, coordination and proper distribution of aid had proved problematic. Early on Friday, tempers boiled over when a crowd gathered outside the governor’s office demanding quicker action, only to be dispersed when police fired warning shots into the air and water cannons were deployed. According to the Kandili seismic institute in Istanbul, Thursday’s quake, lasting 17 seconds, measured 6.4 on the Richter Scale and occurred at 03:27 am local time while most residents were asleep. Initial reports indicated some 30 buildings collapsed in Bingol, with hundreds more receiving light to moderate damage. Damage to outlying villages was still being assessed. And while Oktay Ergunay, deputy general director of the Turkish Red Crescent told IRIN approximately 18,000 people were in need of temporary shelter, closer inspection of homes like Bektas’s reveal it might be weeks before a real appraisal of the damage is made - revealing possibly a far more serious problem than earlier expected. Most of the buildings damaged appear to have been built over the past five years, demonstrating yet again, that the authorities have yet to effectively monitor and supervise construction codes in a city lying on a major fault line. The circumstances are sadly reminiscent of the 1999 earthquake in western Turkey when close to 18,000 people perished. Istanbul had seen a surge in construction in the 1980s and 1990s, with little care taken in the implementation of building codes.

Most of the homes damaged were newly built

In short, many buildings still standing in Bingol, but damaged from Thursday’s quake, may eventually have to be razed. Most of the city’s schools were damaged, many beyond repair. Meanwhile, the search for survivors at the government-built Celtik Suyu Yibo School just outside the city, where some 60 children have been rescued thus far, continued on Friday. It is believed some 100 are still buried under the rubble of the former five storey dormitory facility where close to 200 children once lived. “I don’t have much hope,” one Turkish rescuer told IRIN. “So much time has already passed and they are so young.” Over a loud speaker, a team leader instructs the hundreds of bystanders, relatives, soldiers, and relief workers, outside the mangled remains of the school to sit on the ground as a call is again made for possible survivors still trapped alive under the rubble. But hope is rapidly slipping away as another young, broken body is brought out. To view images from the Bingol earthquake please go to the following IRIN photo gallery