Last Update: February 10, 2023, 06:53 IST
Rescuers and civilians search for survivors under the rubble of collapsed buildings in Nurdagi, in the Gaziantep countryside (Image: AFP)
This once-prosperous city is now counting the dead after Monday’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake reduced it to a heap of rubble
During an “agonizing” 10-minute wait, jackhammers and excavators fell silent, traffic came to a standstill on a four-lane highway next to a pile of rubble, and car engines shut down.
Rescuers commanding eerie calmness went into a hole in an apartment block, which turned into a pile of concrete and steel pancaked with blankets and a pillow. They then came out with the body bag.
The scene has been repeated countless times in Noordagi, a town of 40,000 people, where officials would not give a death toll but said there were certainly hundreds of deaths.
Nurdagi was close to the epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake and the death toll in Turkey and Syria is now above 21,000, with officials saying a “significant” number of fatalities will be found before the search in the city and surrounding villages is called off.
Bridges collapsed on main roads around Nurdagi and mosque domes fell to the ground in the quake.
anxious waiting
Entire blocks of the once prosperous rural town were flattened by the massive tremor.
Residents were forced to stay in tents or their cars as emergency crews using drones and heat-detection monitors ordered silence if possible survivors were found.
“It is excruciating to be silent. We don’t know what to expect,” said Emre, a local resident, as he waited next to a block on a main street in the city.
Four ambulances waited as rescuers rummaged through the rubble and prepared blankets and stretchers. “But mostly it’s the bodies that come out – our families and friends,” said Emre.
Hundreds of international rescuers from Qatar, Malaysia, Spain, Kazakhstan, India And other countries are in the city.
The 130-member team from Qatar rescued a 12-year-old boy and found a woman dead in her apartment within hours of starting work, a team official said on Thursday.
The Gulf state was to open a 50-bed emergency hospital in the town on Thursday.
Their 70 Malaysian counterparts began their heart-wrenching mission by pulling the bodies of a child, his mother and another adult from the rubble.
Malaysian team leader Mohd Khairul Jamil said the “extreme” cold had worsened what was already his rescuers’ most difficult mission, but “we prepare for the worst and hope for the best”.
The international brigade is expected to remain in southern Turkey for two weeks.
Despite the cold, distressed residents of Noordgee wait outside their former homes well into the night as emergency crews and excavators work under floodlights.
A group of women sat on team benches from a nearby football stadium staring at their old apartment, where it was feared that more than 10 bodies might be waiting.
A 70-year-old woman, who declined to be named, said, “I will not leave until we know.”
Two neighbors sat with him wrapped in blankets and in front of a blazing wood fire as they watched diggers dig into the rubble.
Bodrum, a 20-year-old student from the nearby town, said he went up the block to find his mother’s family members.
One was confirmed dead, he said, and one was missing.
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(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed)