Death toll from quake reaches 176

The death toll from last week's powerful earthquake in the eastern Turkish city of Bingol appears to be levelling out, officials told IRIN on Tuesday. "The death toll is 176, but I don't expect it to increase any further," Oktay Ergunay, the deputy director-general of the Turkish Red Crescent, told IRIN from the quake-hit city, noting that search and rescue operations for potential survivors had ended on Sunday. More than 500 residents in the area had been injured, with those still in hospital having suffered from broken bones and fractures, but expected to make a full recovery, he said. His figures coincide with those announced by the Bingol governor, Huseyin Avni Cos, one day earlier and reported by the semi-official Anatolian news agency. The quake, measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale struck at 03:27 local time on Thursday, catching most of its victims asleep. The epicentre was located just 15 km outside Bingol, 665 km east of the capital, Ankara. In the first 96 hours after the first tremor, more than 250 aftershocks were registered, forcing most of the city's 70,000 residents to remain outdoors. Ricardo Mena, of the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team, had just returned from the Bingol region. He told IRIN that efforts by the Turkish authorities were well coordinated, with military personnel present to provide security. "Humanitarian needs are covered, but replenishment of national stocks is strongly recommended," the team leader said, adding that ample qualified search and rescue resources had been made available at the time. According to the expert, given the limited scope of the disaster, the response had been timely and adequate, but disaster response capacity and emergency preparedness needed to be strengthened, particularly in areas prone to such disasters. Power, water and telecommunications were restored within two days of the disaster, he added. Meanwhile, the UNDAC team held an information briefing in Ankara on Tuesday morning, at which its members described the quake's impact on education, housing and, to a lesser extent, on the health sectors. Upwards of 90 percent of all schools in the affected region were damaged. While 70 people perished in the quake inside the city centre, where seven buildings collapsed, UNDAC noted that the highest death toll occurred at the devastated Celtiksuyu boarding school, about 20 km outside the city, where 84 children and a teacher lost their lives. The building's collapse has led to increased anxiety country-wide over what are generally viewed as substandard building codes. "If building codes are properly implemented, you can mitigate the damage occurring in such events," Mena noted. Another 22 people perished in the surrounding villages of the area. In the Cimenli village of Sancak municipality outside Bingol, six members of a family of 17 were killed when their single-family home collapsed. Mena noted that poor construction and heavy building materials had contributed their deaths. Of the village's population of 330, 13 were killed, and 30 of the community's 32 homes were damaged. UNDAC also noted that 17 head of cattle, and 150 other domestic animals had been killed when their stables collapsed, and residents, many of whose livelihoods depended on animal husbandry, would be hard pressed to replace them. But according to Ergunay, it was the issue of shelter that was most acute. To date, the Turkish Red Crescent has sent 11,200 tents 16,000 blankets, and nine mobile kitchens to the region - enough to serve 20,000 people a day - as well as psychosocial intervention teams. According to a preliminary damage assessment in the housing sector for Bingol - which could eventually prove to be much higher - as of 5 May, 82 housing units had been completely destroyed, 1,176 heavily damaged and uninhabitable, and 1,399 damaged, but inhabitable. "Temporary solutions will need to be found," Mena said. And while no international appeal for additional assistance had been made by the Turkish government, recalling the two earthquakes of 1999 in the west of the country, killing nearly 20,000 people, the UN official said that given Turkey's proneness to such disasters, coordination mechanisms for the international donor community needed to be revitalised.