The earthquakes in Syria and Turkey.

[HoldingTheDoor]

The horror of it all is unimaginable. The death toll is currently 2,300 and seems to rise almost every time I check the BBC site. The stories and photos are so heartbreaking.

I know this is a pointless post as there's nothing I can do but donate to DEC but I can't look away either.

Deaths are going to be in the tens of thousands. Thousands of buildings collapsed, some of them full of people. The cold, fires, gas, dust. People who are trapped don’t have much time. They are still rescuing people and hopefully help gets there in time. Terrible tragedy.

Not sure if this has been posted. DEC page with partner agency links for donating.

www.dec.org.uk/monitoring

Really not the time to be asking this.

Are you actually for real? Fucking hell.

Friend of mine, was due to return from holiday to her home there. She now doesn't have a home to return to. She's one of the lucky ones.

Really? Thousands of people have died and you're worried about a holiday?!

This is so crass.

I'd imagine that it might not be great for your holiday if the hotel is currently a giant heap of rubble tomb. Perhaps you should just cancel now; maybe delete your account whilst you're at it, so you don't piss off more people before then.

It's nowhere near the tourist areas. Over 600 miles away

@croppedhimout I was thinking this today despite a rainy gloomy expensive country we've become with corruption, we are lucky that our kids don't get taught earth quake/natural disasters/terror attacks/gun rampage drills at school and go to bed with the thought of "what if while I'm a sleep there is an earthquake" and live that anxiety. Most of us sleep in separate rooms so my mind went wondering how many kids/people are trapped alone in a confined space, hurt, hungry and now freezing. God help them all.

Just horrific

www.whitehelmets.org/en/?fbclid=IwAR02yldrvUsOo9QnZSk6IUfghWorpXc8vlO0t5wkR7ZVX8kPnMAvNp25qdA

this has been recommended by Syrian friends of mine

It's 1 degree Celsius and snowing.

DEC - Disasters Emergency Committee - are monitoring the situation and are more than likely to launch an appeal. In the meantime, they suggest donating to one of their many partner charities, including places like Oxfam, Islamic Relief, Red Cross or Save the Children.

If you want to target support to Syria you can support the White Helmets directly: whitehelmets.org/en/

The DEC is great but most of those agencies cannot reach NW Syria easily- there is only one crossing point and that will be disrupted as it's in the earthquake zone. The regime is likely to make it very difficult to work. White Helmets are search and rescue experts and really awesome at what they do. NW Syria is already one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.

On the search dogs- it will take a day to prep them for travel and get them to London to get a flight. Turkey has a few big NGOs that do search and rescue and there will be government capacity as well. It's a great thing to do but they're not waiting on us.

X posted on the white Helmets. I can personally recommend them.

Have delivered old coats to someone in our village who has started collecting anything that will help these poor people. Better to do something constructive rather than be nasty on the internet!

I feel pretty shit about going on holiday next week now...
@Hickorydickorydockery are you based in the UK? Is that a collection in Turkey you're referring to?

It’s absolutely heartbreaking. Grieving homeless in the snow, so sad.
My donation is on its way.

I think the only help they need right now is drills, ropes, generators, equipment to excavate and manpower to dig and dig. There's loads of charity stuff being shared on sm saying it will be sent to Turkey from the UK but not sure they have the capacity to distribute so many items sorting it out one by one whilst racing against time and loads of Turkish people from different parts from Turkey are sending lorry full of items which is going to cause a huge backlog. As mentioned before, the affected areas are really scattered apart and apparently there are towns and villages where no help has reached yet where surviving neighbours are digging etc.

It's heartbreaking no matter how bad you think your life is right now. Its nothing compared to this. They were starting to rebuild Syria as well. I've just watched a video on tiktok that. Of children being brought in to hospital with nobody to sit with them. They're parents are presumed dead.😥😭

Please please don't send stuff like coats. Just don't. It becomes completely chaotic very quickly.

ideas.ted.com/after-a-disaster-dont-send-toys-or-clothing-send-money-heres-why/

Horrifying. Those poor, poor people.

Agree 100%.

I understand the sentiment. But let the actual professionals and aid agencies do their job without having to deal with transit vans full of well meaning folk from the UK, offloading junk and getting in the way.

I would imagine that if you costed up how much money it took to collect a van full of clothes and then delivering it to South East Turkey in terms of petrol, hotels, food, time off work etc, then you'd be best off holding a village jumble sale, asking for donations and then writing the DEC a fat cheque.

Information from on the ground responders and the UN is available via relief web reliefweb.int/

Without sounding glib, with a major earthquake the death toll always rises because of the time it takes to establish the extent of damage and who is missing. Smaller out of the way places can be completely cut off, so news of their wellbeing takes longer to transmit and of course there can be further quakes or aftershocks.

I've lived and worked in earthquake zones and experienced 2 high magnitude quakes and they are terrifying . My heart goes out to the people in affected areas.

Donating via Dec or directly to MSF/CARE/save the children etc is the best thing we can do from a distance. Relief goods are a pain to sort, and often end up dumped because they are not good quality or standardised or are just too much trouble during an insanely busy time.