Erdogan vows to rebuild Turkey after quake, rescue efforts slow

By Ali Kucukgocmen and Clodagh Kilcoyne

ANTIOCH, Turkey, Feb 15 (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to continue rescue and recovery efforts more than a week after a powerful earthquake tore through his country and neighboring Syria.

The total death toll in Turkey and Syria exceeds 41,000, while many survivors endure near-freezing winter temperatures, after being left homeless by the devastation of cities in both countries.

“We will continue to work until the last citizen left under the collapsed buildings is removed,” Erdogan said Tuesday evening after a cabinet meeting held at the headquarters of the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD).

Assessment of the damage to the buildings, tens of thousands of which were destroyed, will be completed within a week and reconstruction will begin in a few months, he said.

“We will rebuild all homes and workplaces destroyed or uninhabitable by the earthquake and return them to their rightful owners,” he added. More than 105,000 people were injured in the earthquake and more than 13,000 are still hospitalized.

Overnight, a 77-year-old woman named Fatma Gungor was pulled alive from the rubble of a seven-storey building in the city of Adiyaman, some 212 hours after the first earthquake, media reported.

Wearing an oxygen mask, covered in a thermal blanket and strapped to a stretcher, Gungor was carried by rescue teams from the ruins of the building to a waiting ambulance, footage from state broadcaster TRT showed.

Later, Gungor’s relatives embraced the rescue team, made up of soldiers and members of the AFAD disaster management authority.

Nine more survivors were rescued in Turkey on Tuesday as relief efforts focused on helping people facing the cold without sufficient food or shelter.

Erdogan acknowledged there were problems in the initial response to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey in the early hours of February 6, but said the situation was now under control.

“We are facing one of the biggest natural disasters not only in our country, but also in the history of mankind,” Erdogan said.

More than 2.2 million people have already left the hardest hit areas, Erdogan said, and hundreds of thousands of buildings have become uninhabitable.

Among those rescued on Tuesday were two brothers, aged 17 and 21, taken from an apartment building in Kahramanmaras province, and a Syrian man and woman in Antioch.

UN authorities said the rescue phase was coming to an end and the focus was now on housing, food and schooling.

“People are suffering a lot. We asked for a tent, help or something, but so far we haven’t received anything,” said Hassan Saimoua, a refugee staying with his family in a camp site. children’s playground in the Turkish city of Gaziantep, in the south-east of the country.

Saimoua and other Syrians had taken refuge in Gaziantep after the war in their country. Now homeless since the earthquake, they set up makeshift tents in a children’s play area with plastic sheeting, blankets and cardboard.

“The needs are enormous and increasing hour by hour,” said Hans Henri P. Kluge, the World Health Organization’s director for Europe. “Some 26 million people in the two countries are in need of humanitarian assistance.”

“There is also growing concern about emerging health issues related to cold, hygiene and sanitation, and the spread of infectious diseases, and vulnerable people are particularly at risk.”

“DAD, REPLICA!”

Families in Turkey and Syria said they and their children were struggling with the psychological scars of the quake.

“Every time he forgets, he hears a loud noise and then he remembers again,” Hassan Moaz said of his 9-year-old son in Aleppo, Syria. “When he’s sleeping at night and he hears a noise, he wakes up and says, ‘Daddy, talk back!’

A first UN aid convoy entered rebel-held northwestern Syria from Turkey via the recently opened Bab al-Salam border crossing.

The search for survivors was about to end in northwestern Syria, the head of the main White Helmets rescue group, Raed al Saleh, said.

Russia also said it was ending search and rescue efforts in Turkey and Syria and preparing to withdraw.

Turkey’s death toll was 35,418, Erdogan said. More than 5,814 people have been killed in Syria, according to a Reuters tally based on information from Syrian state media and a United Nations agency.

Survivors have joined a mass exodus from the disaster area, leaving their homes and unsure if they will ever be able to return.

Hamza Bekry, a 22-year-old Syrian, has lived in Antioch in southern Turkey for 12 years after fleeing conflict in his country, but now he was preparing to follow his family to Isparta in southern Turkey.

“It’s very hard… We’re going to start from scratch, with nothing, with no work,” Bekry said.

(Additional reporting by Maya Gebeily, Daren Butler, Ezgi Erkoyun, Jonathan Spicer, Timour Azhari, Mehmet Caliskan, Jake Cordell, Firas Makdesi, Ece Tobaksay, Huseyin Hayatsever, Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Lincoln Feast; by Flora Gomez )