New bailouts in Turkey on schedule

ANTIOCH, Turkey (AP) — Rescue teams pulled a woman from the rubble of a building on Monday a week after two powerful earthquakes, although reports of rescues are becoming less and less frequent as the human body’s time can survive without water, especially in sub-zero temperatures.

The 7.8 and 7.5 magnitude earthquakes struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria nine hours apart on February 6. They killed at least 33,185 people, and that number is expected to rise significantly as more bodies are found. The tremors turned cities and towns inhabited by millions into shards of concrete and twisted metal.

Rescuers on Monday extracted a 40-year-old woman from the rubble of a five-storey building in the town of Islahiye, Gaziantep province. The woman, Sibel Kaya, was rescued after 170 hours from the rubble by a team that included Turkish coal mine rescuers.

A 60-year-old woman, Erengul Onder, had earlier been rescued in Besni town, Adiyaman province, by teams from the western town of Manisa.

“We heard the news of a miracle in Besni which has somewhat calmed the fire in our hearts,” tweeted the mayor of Manisa, Cengiz Ergun.

The chances of finding people alive “are already very, very low,” said Eduardo Reinoso Angulo, a professor at the Institute of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Reinoso, lead author of a 2017 study of deaths in earthquake-affected buildings, said the chances of survival for those trapped drops dramatically after five days and is virtually nil after nine days, although he there were exceptions.

David Alexander, professor of emergency planning and management at University College London, agreed, noting that the window for finding living people in the rubble is “almost over”.

However, he noted, the odds weren’t great from the get-go either. Many of the buildings were so poorly constructed that they crumbled into very small pieces, leaving few holes large enough for their inhabitants to survive, Alexander explained.

“If any structure collapses, we usually find open spaces in a pile of rubble that we can dig up,” Alexander said. “Looking at some of these photos from Turkey and Syria, there just aren’t those gaps.”

Winter conditions further reduce options. The temperature in the area dropped to minus 6 degrees Celsius (21 degrees Fahrenheit) overnight.

“The normal way the body compensates for hypothermia is to shiver, and shivering takes a lot of calories,” said Dr. Stephanie Lareau, professor of emergency medicine at Virginia Tech. “So if someone is deprived of food for several days and exposed to cold temperatures, you are more likely to succumb to hypothermia.

A week after the earthquakes, many people were still on the streets without shelter. Some survivors were still waiting in front of collapsed buildings for the bodies of their loved ones to be recovered.

Many in Turkey blamed the widespread devastation on faulty construction in Turkey, and authorities began pointing fingers at contractors allegedly associated with collapsed buildings.

At least 131 people were being investigated for their alleged responsibility for constructing buildings that failed to withstand the earthquakes, authorities said.

Turkey has introduced building regulations that meet earthquake engineering standards, but experts say these regulations are often not enforced.

In Syria, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths said the international community had not provided aid.

The Syrians “are waiting for international aid which has not arrived”, he said on Sunday during a visit to the Turkish-Syrian border.

“So far, we have let the people of northwestern Syria down. They are right to feel let down,” Griffiths added. “My duty and our obligation is to correct this failure as quickly as possible.”

The death toll in the rebel-held region of northwest Syria has reached 2,166, according to the White Helmets rescue group. The total death toll in Syria stood at 3,553 on Saturday, although the 1,387 deaths reported in government-controlled areas have not been updated for several days. Turkey reported 29,605 deaths on Sunday.

In the Syrian capital, Damascus, the head of the World Health Organization warned that the difficulties would spread far into the future, describing the disaster as an “ongoing tragedy affecting millions of people”.

“The combined crises of conflict, COVID, cholera, economic decline and now the earthquake have taken an unbearable toll,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

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Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey, and El Deeb from Adana, Turkey. Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia contributed to this report.