Earthquake crushes city in Turkey, turns buildings into piles of sand

To get there, the highway passes through beautiful snowy hills, full of dark bushes.

The winding road displays windmills and small villages until, far below, a very green valley is revealed. In the center of this valley is Nurdagi. On the morning of last Sunday (5), there was a beautiful city with 40,000 people, about 75 km from Gaziantepe, the capital of the province in southern Turkey.

Five or six-story buildings shared the streets with shops and small restaurants. A single traffic light controlled traffic at the entrance roundabout. After the dawn of Monday (6), everything had changed. Nurdagi was a crushed city. Hundreds of buildings were on the ground.

According to residents and rescue teams, the population had reduced to 20,000. Almost all of the other 20,000 would be buried under rubble. The number has not been confirmed by authorities.

A Sheet visited the city on Friday (10), and the desolation is appalling. The region was the epicenter of the earthquake that has killed more than 24,000 people in the country and neighboring Syria in the last week.

There aren’t even streets, because the buildings have collapsed on top of them. You can’t tell which is the rubble of which building, everything mixes together like sand. No store carries glasses anymore.

Thousands of tents from AFAD, the Turkish disaster agency, are scattered where there is free space. There is no water or power. People warm themselves by burning wood taken from houses. Dozens of teams work every hundred meters, with tractors, excavators. The ambulances take turns when there are bodies.

In the early afternoon, news comes that a person has been found alive in one of the excavations near the entrance to the city. Is it possible, after five days buried? The team uses tools that open concrete and cut rebar used in construction. About 40 people climb a mountain of debris to try to get a better view of the retreat. There is a banner that prevents the curious from entering.

A firefighter opens a metallic gold blanket and covers the man. Soon after, he is taken by stretcher to the ambulance. We found out later that he is not a Turk, but a 55-year-old Syrian, father of six children. The first thing he asked for when rescuers came to him was a cigarette.

Before him, the children had already been taken out. All dead. All, however, cling to the saved life. “God is good,” the rescuers shout as soon as the ambulance door is closed. “God is good”, respond all who follow. The mantra is repeated and responded to twice more.

A lady who didn’t have the strength to get up and accompany the rescue is sitting on a plastic chair. She is interviewed by a Canadian journalist who works for Chinese TV.

Her story is short and immense: her husband, her 30-year-old daughter and three children aged 5, 8 and 13 are buried in the pile of rubble behind her. She touches the pile every now and then. Rescuer Ihsan Dolor explains that the building where the woman lived had ten apartments. “We estimate there were around 40 people when it fell. We’ve already extracted 30 bodies.” There are between 600 and 2,000 first responders working in Nurdagi.

The local cemetery no longer has space. During the day, a funeral procession of SUVs arrives with corpses. There is no coffin for everyone. Tarpaulins or bags are used. An excavator digs holes.

The Turkish government estimates 13.5 million people affected in some way by the tragedy, in a country of 85 million. On Friday, the Minister of Urbanism, Murat Kurum, said that there are 12,141 buildings that have collapsed. The figure, however, is expected to increase as inspections continue.

According to the Department of Earth Engineering at Bosphorus University, which estimated the destruction suffered by the city of Kahramanmaras, with 670,000 inhabitants, 2,192 buildings were completely destroyed, and 20,000, out of a total of 50,000, are uninhabitable.

Governor Mahmut Demirtas told the local press that “benevolent citizens have mobilized”. “A large shipment of food and clothing arrived here. Search and rescue teams, as well as volunteers, have been mobilized. There has been systematic coordination in Nurdagi. We have started setting up tents for our citizens to stay. We will create areas where they can stay in some comfort. .”

The houses of these citizens, if they didn’t fall in one piece, are in half. Without walls, a blue room reveals itself to anyone passing by on a street on the outskirts of the city. A dressing table, a surprisingly full mirror, the pillows and the floral blanket are still on top of the double bed.

In the next room, the tablecloth is still laid out on the dining table. Two immaculate white armchairs and a sofa resist and look out of place among the holes in the walls.