Time is running out to find quake survivors in Turkey, Syria as death toll passes 8,000
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Specialists flying in to Turkey and Syria to help will have to deal with logistics problems and dangerous environments.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
ISTANBUL – Time was running out on Tuesday as thousands of rescue workers were digging through debris in freezing conditions in an increasingly desperate search for survivors, a day after an earthquake left at least 8,000 people dead in Turkey and Syria.
A woman was rescued from the rubble of a collapsed building 22 hours after an earthquake levelled parts of Turkey and Syria,
More than 16,000 rescuers were engaged in a search effort for survivors, the agency said, citing an emergency management official.
But the window for finding others was beginning to narrow, experts said, and the specialists flying to Turkey from the United States and beyond were certain to face challenges gaining access to the site and executing rescue operations.
One to three days after an earthquake is usually the “golden period” for saving lives, said Mr Lody Korua, a search-and-rescue expert in Indonesia who has volunteered for earthquake response operations for more than 15 years. Even then, the logistics can be very complicated.
“The people we’re rescuing are injured. They are under rubble, and we don’t know how deep down under,” he said. “They are stuck, maybe with their legs crushed by the collapsed structure, with broken bones, and they can’t cry for help.”
Some survivors have been found four or more days after an earthquake, said Mr David Lewis, who coordinates an international urban search-and-rescue team for the fire and rescue agency in New South Wales, Australia.
He added that the amount of time a person can survive in rubble depends on several variables, including the temperature, their access to food and water and the way in which they were trapped.
Unfortunately, he added, the powerful earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria came in the middle of the night – a time when many people would have been asleep and unable to find a safer place to shelter.
“Then it would just be hoping that when the building collapses,” he said, “there was a void, and you didn’t have the roof or the upper story coming down on top of you.”
The effectiveness of the specialists racing to the earthquake zone will depend partly on how well they coordinate and on how quickly they arrive. But the area is remote and relatively hard to gain access to, said Mr Yosuke Okita, an expert on international emergency management at Keio University in Japan.
If small airports in the area do not have capacity to transport search-and-rescue personnel and their heavy gear, the teams would need to fly to larger airports and travel to the earthquake zone by truck, Mr Okita said.
Finding trucks may also prove difficult, he added, and some roads to the stricken area are blocked.
When they do arrive, the rescuers entering partly collapsed buildings will be working in dangerous environments.
Many of the buildings in the earthquake zone appear to be lightly reinforced concrete and masonry structures that are several decades old, said Mr Jerome Hajjar, a structural engineer at Northeastern University in Massachusetts who specialises in earthquakes. That means they could be vulnerable to further collapse in the event of a large aftershock, or to a fire caused by a gas leak.
“That just makes the situation all the more challenging,” Mr Hajjar said. NYTIMES
