Families in southern Turkey and northern Syria spent a second night in the freezing cold on Wednesday as overwhelmed rescuers raced to pull people from the rubble two days after a massive earthquake that has killed more than 11,000 people.
In Turkey, dozens of bodies, some covered in blankets and sheets and others in body bags, were lined up on the ground outside a hospital in Hatay province.
Many in the disaster zone had slept their cars or in the streets under blankets, fearful of going back into buildings shaken by the 7.8-magnitude tremor that hit in the early hours of Monday, Turkey’s deadliest earthquake since 1999.
Rescuers there and in neighbouring Syria warned that the death toll would keep rising as some survivors said help had yet to arrive.
“Where are the tents, where are food trucks?” said Melek, 64, in the southern Turkish city of Antakya, adding that she had not seen any rescue teams.
“We haven’t seen any food distribution here, unlike previous disasters in our country. We survived the earthquake, but we will die here due to hunger or cold.”
Speaking to reporters in Kahramanmaras province near the epicentre of the earthquake, with constant ambulance sirens in the background, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said there had been problems with roads and airports but that everything would get better by the day.
With the scale of the disaster becoming ever more apparent, the death toll rose to 8,574 in Turkey, Erdogan said.
The initial quake toppled thousands of buildings including hospitals, schools and apartment blocks, injured tens of thousands, and left countless people homeless in Turkey and northern Syria.
Relatives visit makeshift morgues
Turkish authorities say some 13.5 million people were affected in an area spanning roughly 450 kilometres from Adana in the west to Diyarbakir in the east. Turkey’s disaster management agency said the number of injured was above 38,000.
Turks stepped over hundreds of bodies in stadiums and parking lots across the country on Wednesday, carefully lifting blankets from their faces to try to identify dead relatives.
Reuters journalists in Kahramanmaras saw around 50 bodies draped in blankets on the floor of a sports hall. Family members searched for relatives among the dead.
Kneeling on the auditorium floor, a woman wailed with grief and embraced a body wrapped in a blanket.
Meanwhile, a container blaze at Turkey’s southern port of Iskenderun has been brought under control, Turkey’s maritime authority said on Wednesday, following combined extinguishing efforts from land, sea and air.
Operations at the port were shut down until further notice after a fire broke out Monday, and freighters were diverted to other ports.
“Pending ships should be directed to other facilities as ship handling services cannot be provided,” the authority said in a tweet.
Erdogan has declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces. But residents in several damaged Turkish cities have voiced anger and despair at what they said was a slow and inadequate response by the authorities.
Turkey’s deadliest earthquake in a generation has handed Erdogan a huge rescue and reconstruction challenge, which will overshadow the run-up to the May elections, already set to be the toughest of his two decades in power.
In Syria, already devastated by 11 years of war, the confirmed toll climbed to more than 2,500 overnight.The quake killed people as far south as Hama, some 100 kilometres from the epicentre.
In the town of Jandaris in northern Syria, rescue workers and residents said dozens of buildings had collapsed.
Standing around the wreckage of what had been a 32-apartment building, relatives of people who had lived there said they had seen no one removed alive. A lack of heavy equipment to remove large concrete slabs was impeding rescue efforts.
Rescue workers have struggled to reach some of the worst-hit areas, held back by destroyed roads, poor weather and a lack of resources and heavy equipment. Some areas are without fuel and electricity.
WATCH | Crisis upon crisis: Syrians fend for themselves with aid not forthcoming:
A rescue worker in Syria says the earthquake has been catastrophic for people who’ve already endured so much misery due to their country’s ongoing civil war. Still, there are signs of hope among the ruins.
World’s deadliest quake since 2011
Aid officials voiced particular concern about the situation in Syria, where humanitarian needs were already greater than at any point since the eruption of a conflict that has partitioned the nation and is complicating relief efforts.
The head of the World Health Organization has said the rescue efforts face a race against time, with the chances of finding survivors alive slipping away with every minute and hour.
Some Canadians with ties to Turkey and Syria are still anxiously waiting for updates on their loved ones following Monday’s disastrous earthquakes. Meanwhile, community members are rapidly gathering donations of money and supplies to send overseas.
In Syria, a rescue service operating in the insurgent-held northwest said the number of dead had climbed to more than 1,280 and more than 2,600 were injured.
“The number is expected to rise significantly due to the presence of hundreds of families under the rubble, more than 50 hours after the earthquake,” the rescue service said on Twitter.
Overnight, the Syrian health minister said the number of dead in government-held areas rose to 1,250, the state-run al-Ikhbariya news outlet reported on its Telegram feed. The number of wounded was 2,054, he said.
The region sits on top of major fault lines and is frequently shaken by earthquakes. Some 18,000 were killed in similarly powerful earthquakes that hit northwest Turkey in 1999.
The toll in Syria and Turkey makes it the world’s deadliest since 2011, when an earthquake in Japan triggered a tsunami, killing nearly 20,000 people. The year before that, over 100,000 people were killed by a magnitude 7.0 quake in Haiti.
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