“I think it’s difficult to estimate exactly the number of dead and injured because we need to get into the rubble, but I believe it will double or more,” Griffiths told Sky News after arriving on Saturday in the southern Turkish city of Kahramanmaras, the epicentre of the quake, AFP reported. “We haven’t really started counting the dead yet,” he said.
Tens of thousands of rescue workers are still clearing flattened buildings and buildings as cold weather in the region exacerbates the suffering of millions of people in urgent need of aid after the quake. The United Nations is warning that at least 870,000 people in Turkey and Syria are in desperate need of a hot meal. In Syria alone, as many as 5.3 million people are homeless.
The World Health Organization also issued an emergency appeal Saturday for $42.8 million to meet immediate health needs, and said nearly 26 million people have been affected by the quake. “Soon, search and rescue personnel will make way for humanitarian agencies tasked with caring for the large number of affected people over the coming months,” Griffiths said in a video posted on Twitter.
Turkey’s disaster agency says more than 32,000 people from various organizations across Turkey are working on the search. There are also 8,294 international aid workers. The Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong have also sent search and rescue teams to the affected areas. A total of 130 people from Taiwan are reported to have been sent, and the first team arrived in southern Turkey on February 7 to start search and rescue. Chinese state media reported that an 82-member rescue team had rescued a pregnant woman after arriving on Feb. 8. An interagency search and rescue team from Hong Kong set out for the disaster area on the evening of Feb. 8.
The ongoing civil war in Syria has made it difficult for international aid to reach the country since the earthquake. The northern part of the country is within the disaster zone, but the flow of goods and people is complicated by the fragmentation of areas controlled by the opposition and the government. The disaster zone relied largely on the help of the white helmets, a civil-defence organisation, and UN supplies did not arrive until four days after the quake. In the southern province of Hatay, near the Syrian border, the Turkish government has been slow to deliver aid to the worst-hit areas, for suspected political and religious reasons.
Many Turks have expressed frustration at the slow pace of the rescue operation, saying they have lost precious time, the BBC said. With precious time running out, feelings of sadness and distrust of the government are giving way to anger and tension over a sense that the government’s response to this historic disaster has been ineffective, unfair and disproportionate.
Tens of thousands of buildings collapsed in the quake, and Murat Kurum, Turkey’s environment minister, said that based on an assessment of more than 170,000 buildings, 24,921 buildings in the disaster zone had collapsed or been severely damaged. Turkish opposition parties have accused President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government of negligence, failing to strictly enforce building codes and misusing a huge earthquake tax collected since the last major earthquake in 1999. The original purpose of the tax was to help make buildings more earthquake-resistant.
Under public pressure, Fuat Oktay, Turkey’s vice president, said the government had named 131 suspects and issued arrest warrants for 113 of them in 10 provinces affected by the quake. “We will deal with the matter thoroughly until the necessary legal procedures are completed, especially for buildings that suffered major damage and resulted in casualties,” he promised. The Ministry of Justice said it had set up earthquake crime investigation teams in the affected provinces to investigate casualties caused by the quake.
Of course, the earthquake also had a huge impact on the local fastener industry. The destruction and reconstruction of a large number of buildings affect the increase of fastener demand.