Turkey, Syria need all the help they can get

The world was thrown into grief and mourning after the South Eastern region of Turkey and the Northern part of Syria suffered two devastating earthquakes on Monday, February 6, 2023; the worst so far in Turkey’s history. It’s the most shocking disaster of the moment. A week after the catastrophe, survivors are still being recovered […]

The world was thrown into grief and mourning after the South Eastern region of Turkey and the Northern part of Syria suffered two devastating earthquakes on Monday, February 6, 2023; the worst so far in Turkey’s history. It’s the most shocking disaster of the moment. A week after the catastrophe, survivors are still being recovered from collapsed structures while over 34,000 people have been confirmed killed in the rubble. Tens of thousands of people were reported injured in the two quakes. This is even as victims struggle to survive under freezing weather conditions.

The first quake, which had a magnitude of 7.8 was followed in less than 12 hours by another with a 7.6 magnitude. The region is a hotbed of seismic activity due to its location near several major fault lines. Most of Turkey is on the Anatolian plate, and is surrounded by the Eurasian, African and Arabian plates. The two quakes respectively struck at the depths of 18km and 10km. Experts said while the first quake was roughly equivalent to the energy release from an explosion of about five million tonnes of TNT, the second was equivalent to 3.5 million tonnes.

Turkey has experienced many significant quakes. Among its deadliest was the magnitude 7.8 Erzincan quake of 1939 which killed about 33,000 people and the magnitude 7.6 Izmit quake of 1999 in which about 18,000 people died. Aside last week’s twin quakes, the country has had more than 80,000 deaths from quakes in the past century. Available statistics show that a total of 59 quakes have occurred in Turkey since 1900.

Since the two major quakes struck Turkey along its border with Syria, rescue efforts have continued round the clock, even though there are reports of the inadequacy of heavy equipment needed to ease search and rescue operations. Roads destroyed by the tremors are also said to be hindering access to victims trapped under collapsed buildings.

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Rescuers are working in snow and chilly temperatures dipping to minus 8°C (18°F) to dig through the remains of buildings flattened by the quakes. They search through the debris with excavators, sometimes using bare hands; asking for silence from the crowd so that they can hear any faint sound that may indicate life below.

Thousands of buildings, including schools and hospitals, have been damaged in Turkey and Syria. An estimated 6,000 to 7,000 buildings have been destroyed in Turkey alone, with some neighbourhoods entirely flattened. The quakes also caused massive fire outbreaks at the Iskenderun Port on Turkey’s Southern coast; setting hundreds of shipping containers ablaze and causing immense damage.

Described by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as “Grade 3 Emergency”, a state of emergency has been declared in 10 provinces of Turkey along its Southern border with Syria. The disaster-struck provinces that cover about 100,000 square kilometres (38,000 square miles) are Kahramanmaras, Adana, Adiyaman, Osmaniye, Hatay, Kilis, Malatya, Sanliurfa, Diyarbakir and Gaziantep.

The condition of victims of the quakes is evidently graver in the battle-torn and rebel-held region of Syria, Idlib, where people who once lost their homes have now again been rendered homeless. The first quake’s epicentre, about 33 kilometres from Gaziantep, a major city and provincial capital in South Eastern Turkey, is home to millions of Syrian refugees. In Syria, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that 10.9 million people have been affected across the North Western governorates of Hama, Latakia, Idlib, Aleppo and Tartous, where thousands of residents have been rendered homeless in icing temperatures.

As a long-term measure, we advise the government of Turkey to enforce the building codes that were developed after the 1999 quake. The codes seek to compel developers to build quake-resistant structures. Existing structures are also required to be retrofitted in order to also make them quake-resistant by the use of Vibration Stiffness Dampers (VSD). Experts opine that devastations from the latest quakes would have been lesser if the existing building codes were complied with for new and existing structures.

While we commiserate with the people and governments of Turkey and Syria over the very tragedy, we call on the international community, including the Nigerian government, to support and lift the affected countries out of the devastation. The UN is encouraged to lead regional bodies, humanitarian organisations and philanthropic groups in relief efforts that should include food, clothing, medical supplies and tents for victims.

To support Syria out of the catastrophe, we call on countries that imposed sanctions on it to lift them so that support from the international community can reach victims. Governments must see their interventions as a matter of contingency. Countries with hi-tech capacity for disaster management are urged to send in their interventions and therefore race against time in their rescue and humanitarian support operations. The world must be united on this.