Tag: earthquake in Van

By Jasper Mortimer

Family members have perished, their houses have been reduced to rubble, and some still lack basic shelter as sleet begins to fall, but the survivors of Sunday’s devastating earthquake in eastern Turkey are showing remarkable restraint.

Through the broken shop windows in Ercis the merchandise can still be seen on the shelves, or perhaps tumbled onto the floor.

There are no soldiers standing guard outside the shops, despite the gaping holes. People lack many things, but they have not taken to looting in a sign that speaks volumes about the community spirit in this town near the provincial capital of Van.

The earthquake wrecked the two-story house of Mehmet Tanriverdi and his family of five. The house still stands, but it is cracked from the ground to the roof.

He and his family now live in a Red Crescent tent pitched in the alley behind the house. They have blankets, which they retrieved from the house, and they have bottled water supplied by the authorities.

But they had to wait five hours for a minibus to deliver bread for their street on Wednesday, and there was a scuffle as two people fought over the loaves.

The Tanriverdis complain that although the government had given them a tent on Monday, on Sunday night they had been forced to sleep under the stars, and their 18-month-old girl had fallen ill.

The authorities have still not provided them with blankets, medicine, baby clothes, a heater or a carpet. They share their tent with six others.

“We’re sleeping on top of each other,” says Zeynep Tanriverdi, a 10-year-old member of the extended family.

Civil engineer Murat Altun, 29, said the Tanriverdi’s house would have to be demolished. A civil servant, he is going from house to house in Ercis deciding which houses are still habitable.

Altun said that so far his inspections showed that about 40 per cent of the buildings he had inspected would have to be knocked down.

The Tanriverdis would have to live in their tent for “two to three months,” the engineer said, after which they would probably be moved to a prefabricated house or a container.

In “18 months to two years” a new house would be built on their property. The government would pay 70 per cent of the cost. The Tanriverdis would have to come up with the remainder, he estimated.

Mehmet Tanriverdi, a waiter who has been unemployed for the past three months, said: “It’s going to be very difficult. The economy is in a bad state, there’s no work.”

He has been surviving on credit, promising to pay shopowners when he gets a job.

But there are signs of revival all round, despite the repeated and severe aftershocks. The local electricians are already busy restoring power lines.

And the fact that engineer Altun and his colleague are already taking stock of the usable buildings shows that the town of about 100,000 is getting back on its feet. – Sapa-DPA

via Community spirits breaks through Turkey – Daily News | News | IOL.co.za.

By MARC CHAMPION

ISTANBUL—Turkey’s government said on Saturday it would call off efforts to find survivors in the wreckage of last weekend’s powerful earthquake by the end of the day, as the official death toll from the 7.2 magnitude tremor rose to 582.

The decision came just a day after a 13 year-old boy was pulled alive from the rubble and the government said it would put a new urban redevelopment law to Parliament by the end of the year, aimed at razing substandard buildings that might collapse in future earthquakes.

Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said that to date 455 people had died in Ercis alone, a town of 80,000 people on the northern shore of Lake Van in eastern Turkey, according to the state Anadolu news agency. Sixty-one people died in the regional center Van and 66 in villages, Mr. Atalay said. Eighty-four buildings collapsed in Ercis and six in Van, he said. More than 2,000 homes collapsed in the villages.

“Search and rescue efforts are under way in four buildings in Ercis, and efforts will be completed this evening,” Mr. Ataly told reporters, according to Anadolu.

The last person to be found alive in the search was Serhat Tokay, 13-year-old boy pulled from a collapsed apartment building in Ercis 108 hours after Sunday’s tremor.

The boy said he had been able to hear rescuers from the first day but that they were unable to hear his cries until two or three layers of the building had been removed, Anadolu reported.

While four-and-a-half days is a long time to survive trapped under rubble from an earthquake, it isn’t unheard of. According to a 2006 George Washington University study of earthquake-to-rescue survival times, survivors were found after 48 hours in just 18 of 34 earthquakes studied. Of the 18 earthquakes, the maximum survival time recorded was two weeks.

In Japan’s earthquake and tsunami in March, survivors were found at least nine days afterward, while a devastating quake in Haiti last year produced the longest survivors on record: A 16-year-old girl was rescued after 15 days in Port-au-Prince, while a delirious 28-year-old rice-seller was found after apparently spending 27 days trapped in rubble.

Mr. Atalay said a total of 231 people had been rescued since the quake.

While a crushing blow to the relatively small community of Ercis, the toll is at the low end of estimates made by seismologists when the quake first struck, likely because it occurred on a sunny Sunday afternoon, when many people were outdoors and children weren’t in school buildings, several of which collapsed.

Turkey is familiar with how poorly constructed buildings can devastate populations. In 1999, a tremor with an epicenter about 100 kilometers east of Istanbul killed more than 17,000 people, with poor construction standards blamed for the high toll.

It wasn’t clear exactly what changes a new urban redevelopment law would make, but they appeared aimed at making it easier for the government to condemn and demolish buildings considered at risk. According to Anadolu, the Environment and Urbanization ministry would be asked to draw up assessments of all buildings in the country, while houses in high-risk earthquake zones would be removed.

Tighter construction regulations have been enacted in Turkey since 1999. However, swathes of Istanbul, a city of at least 13 million, still are composed of illegal houses, often self-built by rural immigrants, who effectively squat on land that wasn’t zoned for development.

Over time, many of these so-called gecekondus have become incorporated into the city’s infrastructure. Governments have been reluctant to demolish them, for fear of losing votes. Seismologists believe there is a high risk of a major earthquake striking Istanbul, and on Thursday Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised to demolish gecekondus in preparation.

“We are not going to worry about whether they will vote for us or not,” he said.

Many of the 85 buildings that collapsed in Ercis were not gecekondus, but legal apartment blocks built before the new construction regulations were introduced. Poor implementation of the new regulations means that many new buildings also are substandard, largely because civil engineers appointed by municipalities to enforce them are unqualified and frequently issue licenses without visiting the properties, according to a report submitted to parliament by the Turkish Chamber of Civil Engineers last year.

Media reports suggest the process is also distorted by corruption. Opposition politicians said new legislation wasn’t needed to improve construction standards or demolish illegal and substandard buildings, noting that previous similar pledges have gone unfulfilled.

Write to Marc Champion at Marc.Champion@wsj.com

via Turkey to End Effort to Find Quake Survivors – WSJ.com.

Aid Arriving in Turkey Quake Area

By SEBNEM ARSU

ISTANBUL — An Israeli plane carrying emergency housing led a flow of international aid into the quake-stricken area of eastern Turkey on Thursday, as two more people were pulled alive from the rubble.

Ahmad Halabisaz/Getty Images

A Turkish girl received food in a camp after an earthquake, in Van, Turkey.

Early on Friday, rescue teams freed a 13-year-old boy more than 100 hours after the powerful earthquake struck on Sunday afternoon, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported. On Thursday, an 18-year-old was extracted alive.

The Disaster Crisis Center said at least 523 people had been confirmed dead and some 185 rescued since the 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck Sunday.. Heavy machinery began moving into the stricken areas, suggesting that, with time reducing the likelihood of rescues, operations would begin shifting into cleanup and recovery.

Dozens of countries offered assistance almost immediately after Sunday’s earthquake, but the government initially declined, saying it had sufficient resources. But as the level of need for shelter and supplies has become more clear, the government began reaching out.

Azerbaijan transferred a rescue team of 140 workers as well as thousands of other supplies like tents, blankets and generators while other countries — France Italy, Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine — contributed with hundreds of tents, the Disaster Crisis Center said.

More housing supplies were expected from Japan, England, and Ireland. About 300 constructions specialists conducted a preliminary inspection to mark damaged buildings in the region.

The Israeli plane delivered five prefabricated houses and other supplies, the statement added. The plane landed in Ankara, the capital, rather than a smaller airport nearer the hardest-hit area around the city of Van.

The Foreign Ministry emphasized Turkey’s appreciation for the Israeli assistance, but reiterated that humanitarian gestures during a natural disaster would not affect strained diplomatic relations.

Turkey is demanding an official Israeli apology and compensation for the relatives of eight Turks and an American citizen of Turkish descent who were killed when Israeli commandos intercepted a Turkish aid flotilla attempting to break the blockade of Gaza last year.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 28, 2011, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkey: Israel Delivers Quake Aid.

via Aid Arriving in Turkey Quake Area – NYTimes.com.