Hell on Earth

Still from Video:  In this brief video, a man is shown rushing an infant to safety in Jindires, Syria, after the child was born Monday in a site that collapsed because of the earthquake

"It's a race against time because the weather is so, so cold. It's been raining. It's been snowing. There have been heavy rains, heavy winds and the temperatures are below zero."

"So we need to find people as soon as possible because people are stuck under [the] rubble."

Hombeline Dulière, British charity Catholic Agency for Overseas Development 

"We barely escaped from inside the house. We have four children and we left the house with them at the last moment."

"I guess there are several people trapped inside. It was a huge disaster."

Survivor Neset Guler, Kahramanmaraş, Turkey

"There are possibly hundreds more buildings like this."

"Thousands are currently under the rubble. They [Turkish authorities] won't let us save them by our means, but they don't send anyone to help either."

Ahmet Alinak, Turkish city of Malatya

People sit by a collapsed building in Malatya, Turkey on Tuesday. (Emrah Gurel/The Associated Press)

 

People trapped under rubble scream in pain and despair, calling for help, but help is not always there. The area affected by the massive 7.8 on the Richter scale earthquake that hit both Turkey and Syria in the early hours of Monday, then repeated itself with a 7.5 tremblor twelve hours later is so vast, that even with an influx of foreign disaster relief groups from the international community the spread is too vast for rescuers' relatively thin ranks to be everywhere they're needed. Residents of towns afflicted by the quakes haven't the equipment and the expetrtise to engage in search and rescue in a scene this catastrophic.

Survivors of the quakes camp out on the streets beside the destroyed buildings that housed their family members. Imagining that they're alive still, under the rubble, but unable to do anything, forbidden by government edict to even try, informed to wait until rescuers arrive, when and if they will. The agony of holding vigil, waiting, imagining the sound of people screaming out in extremis hangs like the deathly pall it is, over the scenes of hellish destruction.

Some of those buried under rubble have been found and area hospitals are desperately trying to cope with the numbers and with the wide extent of their injuries. Infants are discovered and rushed to hospital. A newborn child was dug out of the rubble. Children are traumatized, silent and fearful. Some people able to use their phones livestream where their addresses are, begging to be rescued. One of the worst-hit Turkish cities was Diyarbakir where residents spoke of the ground shaking intensity so severe they were unable to stand.

People sit near the damaged historical New Mosque following an earthquake in Malatya, Turkey. (Stringer/Reuters)

Rescuers hush the atmosphere, asking for silence, to detect any possible screams of trapped people under destroyed buildings. And there are thousands of destroyed buildings. Night passed, dawn arrived, and the rising sun on Tuesday illuminated vast devastation in the destruction of entire neighbourhoods. The official figures of the dead steadily rise. Experts calculating the situation, the intensity of the quake, the intensely crowded population augmented by millions of refugees from Syria's civil war, warn of the likelihood of the total death count approaching 20,000.

As for the injured, their numbers will eclipse those of the dead. The physical injuries may heal over time, but the memory of the sudden explosive events of mass destruction will have embedded memories for a lifetime of disturbed mental health. The multiples of tens of thousands left homeless by the disaster in both countries slept out in the cold on Monday. People in Gazientep, a provincial capital close to the epicentre, took shelter in shopping malls, stadiums and community centres,while mosques in the region opened to provide shelter.

In Syria, both government-held territory and the opposition-held enclave saw families trapped in rubble, reported the humanitarian rescue group, the Syrian White Helmets. Packed with roughly four million people displaced from elsewhere in Syria by the war, many live in buildings whose integrity had already been compromised by the ravages of wartime bombardment. Health facilities filled with the injured; over 6,400 people were rescued across ten provinces, reported Turkey's disaster management authority. 

In an area extending from Aleppo and Hama in Syria to Turkey's Diyarbakir, over 330 kilometres to the northeast, thousands of buildings had collapsed. Over 5,600 buildings were destroyed in Turkey alone. Among them hospitals. An expert in natural hazards noted that the bitterly cold temperatures could reduce the time rescuers are given to save trapped survivors. Along with the difficulty of working in areas involved in civil war, to complicate rescue efforts.

People warm up around a fire following an earthquake in Antakya, Hatay Province, Turkey. (Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters)