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.

I cried at that image where it's so hopeless not being able to do anything to take away his pain. Praying to god to give him strength. It's so heartbreaking.

No problem at all @mbosnz , I understand the good intentions behind those words and very much appreciate it. Sorry this brought back old wounds to you.. I'm also emotional, have been crying at those children pulled out of the rubble. Lucky to be alive. Where will they go, do they have parents? Is there food, water for them? What kind of future awaits them? Also feeling immensely guilty sitting in my comfy warm home. Reading these messages help. Thank you all for your compassion...

Well, let's have a little cry together, count our blessings, do what we can (talking cash donations here, they're the most useful!), send our thanks to those like USAR that do the incredibly hard yards of rescue and recovery, and I guess, outside of that, there's sod all we can do. It aches, too, when it's your home, your country, and your people, and you're not there.

There's hundreds of collapsed buildings. a group of rescue team (counted about 10) spent 30 hours rescuing only one person, imagine multiplying that per person/per building. They need manpower and as time goes on, they will be digging up more dead bodies than survivors which the death toll will double everyday from now adding hypothermia to the equation as well.

BBC is reporting the death toll rises to more than 7,200

Other countries have sent teams too that aren't listed.

For example, Israel sent a search and rescue and medical team of 150 out last night. They always have teams ready to go to disaster zones at short notice.

@CoteDAzur, can't remember which part of Turkey you live in, but thinking of you and hoping you and yours are OK.

Thank you so much to everyone for the links to White Helmets, Relief Web and so on to donate to. Will get onto that now.

It’s incredibly sad. Some of the people are in very remote villages where road access is terrible and the snow and rain does not help. People are in make shift tents as relief and help has not arrived yet. I have friends who have family in Turkey and they are saying there’s no help with search and rescue in some places. Very little access to medical help and access to good and water. It makes you feel guilty for been safe and sound with your loved ones….

Just so sad. I can't believe the physical resilience of those young children. Heart goes out to them all.

The story of the newborn baby has really got to me. All these poor people, it's just devastating.

It matters so much, when it's you. That people care. That people contribute. That people witness.

Perking - Thank you for thinking of me but I don't live in Turkey. It's heartbreaking, though, and brings back terrible memories of the 1999 earthquake which I did live through.

if you wish to help, please consider donating to the search and rescue organisation AKUT. It is a civil organisation made up entirely of volunteers, and very efficient in the aftermath of such disasters. They came to prominence in after the huge earthquake near Istanbul in 1999 when government agencies were utterly useless in the first weeks and ordinary citizens picked up whatever tools they had and went to the affected zones to save people from under the rubble in a race against time.

www.akut.org.tr/en/donation

Please also think of the hard yards later.

I've worked in humanitarian relief and conflict for 20 years now, and there's a huge surge of support initially. This is fantastic. But the scope of what's possible can be limited. We couldn't un-flood the communities swamped by the tsunami. No matter the scale of the response they can't get under every building. This is the tragedy of a sudden onset disaster.

But see how some of the buildings stand? That's because they were built properly. That's a governance failure, poor building codes and corner-cutting. For years after the tsunami we were trying to stop fisher communities having their land sold off to big hotel chains. So keep these areas in your thoughts- look at organisations who work on good governance and democracy and accountability and stay with it for the long haul. Support campaigns for humanitarian access to NW Syria. Write to your MP. Campaign for safe passage for refugees.

Thanks @BasilPersil I would echo that. I run a small charity that works with refugees and in the immediate aftermath of a crisis there is always an overwhelming mountain of support. Although fantastic what would be even better is long standing , regular support and participation.

Questions should be being asked of Erdogan - like where is the Turkish army? He has been quick to impose a 3 month long state of emergency, but I would imagine that to be about being able to stop any protests that are bound to happen when people realise the extent of the horror.

The areas affected (SE Turkey and N Syria) are Kurdish. The people who are the underclass in those countries.

Buildings that collapsed were probably put up by builders who cut corners on the materials they used - replacing cement for sand for example - and officials who took backhanders to sign off on them.

I would be amazed if the final death toll isn't more like 100,000.

We have family there. They are mostly fine, with degrees of damage to their homes, but some are missing in collapsed buildings.

The army is on the ground, although what they are trained for isn't search & rescue or disaster relief.
www.milliyet.com.tr/gundem/komandolar-deprem-bolgesinde-msbden-pes-pese-aciklamalar-6899965

Kahramanmaraş and its neighboring cities are not Kurdish. They are not even Kurdish-majority. See in this ethnic map:
umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/turkey-ethnic-map_663670#7/38.061/36.530

If you compare this disaster to the 1999 quake, you will see that government response was even more delayed and more inept than this one even though the 1999 quake was near İstanbul so arguably with a far higher ethnic Turk population. This is incompetence and corruption at work, pure and simple, not a case of less help given to Kurds.

Building regulations are tougher since 1999, but some buildings were built before then and many of the newer ones were no doubt not built correctly. However, the scale of the apparent devastation with entire neighborhoods leveled to the ground suggests that what we are seeing here also has to do with the huge (7.8) scale of the earthquake, its epicenter's proximity to the surface, and its unusually long duration (2 minutes).

Photos give clues to the problems. For instance, when a building is standing but a section of it has sagged, it looks like some columns were cut off on the ground level to accommodate a business. When you see a building where floors have pancaked to the ground, it doesn't seem to be a problem of concrete but of the steel in the columns that wasn't in sufficient amounts or perhaps not tied properly to the slabs.

There was a picture of one building that seemed to have just toppled over. I am assuming in towns where you can see one building totally decimated and others around it still standing with no apparent significant damage that the collapsed building hadn’t been built to specified regulations

Maras was subject to ethnic cleansing of the Kurds in the 80s, which is why so many of those who took refuge in the UK are from there. We have a (Kurdish) niece in Elbistan who lost her house in the earthquake, but she is luckily ok.

Our family in Diyarbakir and the surrounding areas have told us they have not seen any sign of the army.

Cote, good to hear you're safe. I remember you saying a few years ago that you lived in Turkey, so clearly times have moved on!

The scale just defies survival unfortunately. I have seen a few rescues of children but the number of rescues if very low.

I don't know if anyone remembers the Surfside apartment building collapse in Florida a couple years ago but that was half of one 12 story building in the summer - all the resources available were immediately brought the scene and even then only four people were rescued from the rubble and they were right near the surface and rescued almost immediately. There was at least one woman trapped alive talking to rescuers from inside the rubble but they couldn't reach her and she died, likely when a fire broke out. In the end it took them over a month to work their way through the rubble of half of one building and find all the victims. And this was a high end building with people with money who tried to bring in whatever resources they could. In addition to the rubble, recovery efforts were hampered by fire, gas leaks, water and flooding (from putting out fires) and

Multiply that by the scale of the earthquake to thousands of buildings and without being able to mobilize all resources to one site, and even a lack of available resource - and it seems like an impossible task to even find the victims.

"Maras was subject to ethnic cleansing of the Kurds in the 80s"

I don't know what you were up to in the '80s but I was there and I have vivid memories of what those days were like, so take a breath and think before beating your Kurd vs Turk drum on such a thread about sympathy and help to the victims of a natural disaster.

Anyway, you do seem to have realized that Kahramanmaraş isn't a Kurdish city and that your previous insinuation that help wasn't great because its people are an "underclass" is incorrect.

Perking - Thank you. It is sad to see that not much has changed since then, though.

@purpleboy, it’s surely much easier for journalists who can just get on a plane. Search teams will need equipment, too, and cooperation/permission from govt.and other local authorities - they can’t usually just pile in.

A dd worked for many years for large NGOs, inc. during the aftermaths of the Boxing Day tsunami and the Haiti earthquake. TBH people sitting comfortably at home often have absolutely no idea of the difficulties and obstructions caused locally - often with corruption involved. One thing I heard of was customs officials demanding bribes for releasing essential equipment - and the NGO in question refused to pay bribes, so the equipment was delayed for some time.

The teams don't need to rush there because typically most of earthquake work is recovery work - not rescue work. People close to the surface or edges of the rubble are usually rescued almost immediately but they are often really the only survivors. For those buried in rubble, very, very few ever make it out. It typically just isn't a survivable disaster. You get the rare survival story and pictures but with the way the buildings fall with layers of victims between layers of mangled building material, it is very rare for even rescue teams to be able to reach those who survive the initial collapse.