 Women react at the site of a collapsed building in the aftermath of a major earthquake in the Elbistan district of Kahramanmaras, Turkey, on Wednesday. (Sedat Suna/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) |
Days after the earthquake hit southern Turkey, rescue efforts are still going on across the region. And despite significant pledges of international aid, these efforts have been painfully difficult. The death toll across Syria and Turkey stood at over 12,000 on Wednesday, already marking it as one of the deadliest natural disasters of the 21st century. It could get worse as the days drag on, with many people still believed to be stuck under rubble and rescue teams reporting supply issues and logistical problems. Why can’t these rescue efforts go faster? It certainly isn’t because of the efforts of the rescue teams, who have been working through the night in shocking conditions. Instead, there are four major reasons — a combination of bad luck and bad politics that fused to make a perfect storm. 1. The earthquake impacted a huge area of land where lots of people live.Monday morning’s earthquake and aftershocks were so large that there was damage hundreds of miles away in Beirut and Damascus, Syria. Residents in Egypt even felt its shakes. The earthquake, believed to have happened due to events in the East Anatolian fault system, had an epicenter near the town of Gaziantep in southern Turkey. It was measured as a 7.8-magnitude earthquake and then there were a series of large aftershocks — the largest, a 7.5 magnitude temblor around 60 miles away from of the original epicenter, was so big that some seismologists consider it a separate earthquake. The epicenter of the initial earthquake was relatively shallow too, about 11 miles underground according to U.S. Geological Survey. As The Post’s Carolyn Y. Johnson wrote earlier this week, “that means the seismic waves did not have to travel far before they reached buildings and people on the surface, leading to more intense shaking.” Despite the risk of earthquakes in the region, this is a highly populated area. The World Health Organization has estimated that 23 million people live in the impacted areas of Turkey and Syria. Almost all who lived in the region had not experienced a major earthquake within their lifetime, with most recent earthquakes in Turkey in different areas. “It’s difficult to watch this tragedy unfold, especially since we’ve known for a long time that the buildings in the region were not designed to withstand earthquakes,” USGS scientist David Wald said in a statement. 2. It came in the middle of the night at a time of unusually cold weather.The first earthquake hit at around 4:15 a.m. local time. This meant that people were not congregated in schools, offices or markets, but spread out in apartments or houses. There’s another reason many people were inside: The area has been seeing an abnormal cold front, with temperatures as much as 15 degrees below average for this time of year, with freezing lows. Turkey’s General Directorate of Meteorology tweeted this week that temperatures are expected to be below seasonal norms through at least Feb. 14. Severe winter temperatures cause major complications for rescue efforts, significantly raising the risk that any survivors of the quake could die from exposure before being rescued. With many using their bare hands to move rubble, the cold impacts rescue teams, too. And even once rescued, there is little adequate shelter. In many parts of Turkey and especially Syria, too, electricity remains out and gas supplies, widely used to heat homes, are destroyed or dwindling. “We don’t have a tent, we don’t have a heating stove, we don’t have anything. Our children are in bad shape. We are all getting wet under the rain and our kids are out in the cold,” 27-year-old Aysan Kurt told reporters from the Associated Press in Turkey. “We did not die from hunger or the earthquake, but we will die freezing from the cold.” 3. Its epicenter was a border region already touched by conflict and war.The ill effects of the nearly 12-year-long Syrian civil war loom over the region with devastating cost, in particular in the parts of northern Syria that remain outside of government control. In these rebel-held parts of Syria, rescue work is done not by the state but by various nonstate actors — most notably, the White Helmets, an aid group that has been supported by Britain, the United States and other international groups. The regions have already been decimated by frequent shelling and brutal fighting. The earthquake is only the latest humanitarian disaster to impact the region. In a statement, International Rescue Committee President and CEO David Miliband said that even “24 hours before the catastrophe, over 15 million Syrians were already in need of humanitarian assistance, more than at any other time since the conflict began” in 2011. Across the border in Turkey, there are an estimated 3.6 million refugees, including many who lived in sprawling refugee camps near badly hit cities like Gaziantep. Last year, Human Rights Watch warned that many lived in perilous conditions due to legal employment restrictions and rising xenophobia in Turkey. “We do not know the exact number of refugees impacted and we might not for some days, but we fear the number might be significant, given the epicenter of the quake was close to areas with high concentrations of refugees,” Matthew Saltmarsh, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency told AFP this week. 4. Political divisions loom over the rescue efforts.The Syrian government is a pariah in much of the West for widespread human rights abuses during the civil war. Many nations, including the United States, have placed economic sanctions on it. Though most of these sanctions carve out exceptions for humanitarian assistance. In the past, international aid groups reached rebel-held northern Syria through a border crossing in Turkey called Bab al-Hawa. However, as my colleagues reported today, the earthquake has effectively cut that link. “The road connecting the city of Gaziantep to the crossing is in one of the most damaged areas and is currently inaccessible,” Sarah Dadouch and Paulina Villegas wrote. There had once been several border crossings. However, Russia — a key Syrian ally with veto power on the U.N. Security Council — forced all the others to close crossings in 2020, describing the aid as a violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian government. After the earthquake, Syria has called for sanctions to be lifted and nternational aid to be delivered, which it can then redistribute — moves that analysts like Charles Lister, director of the Syria program at the D.C.-based Middle East Institute, have called “opportunistic.” In Turkey, too, there are worries that the government is less focused on a speedy response but more on defending its power. With President Recep Tayyip Erdogan facing an election in May, questions about the loosely regulated and allegedly corrupt construction boom his government has overseen may sting. He has quickly come out on the defensive, accusing government critics of spreading “fake news and distortions” and suggesting the government would go after those who tried to cause “social chaos.” On Wednesday, internet-monitoring group NetBlocks reported that Twitter appeared to have been blocked on several networks across the country and pointed to the government as a likely culprit. It’s a potentially cynical move: Rescue efforts had been documented on social media and some trapped survivors had even taken to tweeting their location — but it was the platform where criticism was rampant. |
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