On Saturday morning rescuers tried by the light of headlamps, to find survivors in the rubble of collapsed buildings in western Turkey after a powerful earthquake that left at least 26 dead and more than 800 injured in the country and in neighboring Greece.
In Bayrakli, Izmir province, rescue teams struggled to force their way through twisted beams and concrete blocks, the remains of a seven-story apartment building, sometimes calling for silence to try to locate possible survivors, according to a correspondent.
The earthquake, whose magnitude was evaluated at 7 on the Richter scale by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), occurred shortly before 12:00 GMT in the Aegean Sea, southwest of Izmir, the third-largest city in Turkey, and near the Greek island of Samos.
The shock was so powerful that it was felt as far away as Istanbul and Athens and caused a mini-tsunami that flooded the streets of Seferihisar, a Turkish town near the epicenter, and swept the coast of Samos.
Gökhan Kan, a 32-year-old delivery man, was on his motorbike when the earthquake hit. “I was terrified, not for myself, but for my wife and my son I said to myself: ‘It’s never going to end’. I have the impression that it lasted 10 minutes, ”he says.
Jackhammer
In Turkey, 24 people died and 804 were injured, according to the government agency for disaster situations (AFAD).
In Greece, two teenagers were killed on the island of Samos when a wall collapsed, state television Ert reported. Nine people were also injured and material damage is to be deplored.
But it is Turkey’s densely populated Aegean coast that has been hit the hardest. Rescuers were in a race against time to extract survivors from the rubble.
According to AFAD, 17 buildings were collapsed or badly damaged.
In Bayrakli, rescuers were lifting sections of the wall using cranes and clearing the rubble with the continuous sound of a jackhammer.
Having succeeded in reaching by telephone to a young girl trapped, they tried to obtain indications allowing to find her, while reassuring her, according to the images of the public channel TRT.
“Don’t worry, we’re coming! I’ll hang up to save your batteries. Decrease the brightness of your screen and stay calm,” one of his relatives advised him, under the supervision of a rescuer.
“We live in Izmir, the weather is mild, we can spend the night like that, and tomorrow too. But it is difficult to plan for the long term, there is a feeling of helplessness, ”Cemalettin Enginyurt, a 51-year-old retired soldier.
Several hospitals in Izmir, congested due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, have transferred patients to other establishments to be able to accommodate the victims of the earthquake.
The shock was also felt in Istanbul, the country’s economic capital, but no damage was noted there.
“Solidarity neighbors”
Putting aside their current sharp diplomatic tensions, Ankara and Athens pledged to help each other when needed, during a telephone interview between President Erdogan and Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
“In these times, our people need to stand together regardless of our differences,” Mitsotakis wrote on Twitter.
“The fact that two neighbors are united in these difficult times has more value of a lot of things”, replied Mr. Erdogan on the social network.
This appeal for solidarity recalls the aid that Greece offered to Turkey after a deadly earthquake in 1999, a gesture that allowed relations between these two countries in crisis to warm up. Experts then spoke of “earthquake diplomacy”.
France joined this movement, offering its assistance to Athens and Ankara on Friday, while it is in the midst of a crisis with Turkey on many diplomatic and geopolitical issues.
Turkey and Greece are located in one of the most active earthquake zones in the world.
In 1999, a magnitude of 7.4 earthquakes struck northwestern Turkey, killing more than 17,000, including a thousand in Istanbul.
Last January, an earthquake of 6.7 killed around 40 people in the province of Elazig (east).
In Greece, the last deadly 6.7 magnitude earthquake occurred on the island of Kos, near Samos in the Dodecanese archipelago in the Aegean Sea in July 2017, killing two people.
