While the hope of finding survivors go out, the management of the disaster enters a new phase: the care of more than a million private housing inhabitants.
by Angèle Pierre (Malatya (Turkey), Special Envoy)
Snow invaded the plains at the foot of the Taurus mountain range. The white carpet sparkles under the rays of the winter sun, punctuated by unloaded apricot fields. But the roar of a helicopter breaks the peaceful appearance of the landscape. Since the earthquakes on Monday, February 6, it is by the tunes that the links are most effectively made between the towns and the villages of the countryside withdrawn from Malatya, Turkey. Prefecture of the center of the country, located near the epicenter of the earthquake, the city and the region are among the areas most devastated by the disaster.
On the main artery of the village of Polat, not a dwelling resisted the jolt. The houses were however low … One or two floors at most, but the rules of seismography are breaking the observations of the layman. The wooden structures, the briquettes and the dry earth have sold, leaving dozens of households without home. They now warm up in the stove in the tents installed by AFAD, the governmental disaster management body, which arrived the next day on the spot.
that of Fadime, sixty -year -old with a frank look, faces his house in ruins. She settled in about fifteen square meters with four other members of her family: two teenage girls, her sister-in-law, and their elderly stepmother, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. For six days, the problems accumulate: “We were unable to recover my mother-in-law’s medicines, and we have very few kitchen utensils”, she explains, lifting the cover of a smoking pan filled with potatoes that cook on the stove.
This seasonal worker, specialized in tobacco harvest, has no idea what she and her family will become. “Thanks to God, we are alive,” she consoles himself. Other villages are still waiting for help. An online information site based in the region brought back attacks of wolves attracted by abandoned corpses in the village of çelikhan.
The earthquakes of magnitude 7.8 and 6.5 which affected Turkey and Syria on Monday, February 6 left at least 33,186 dead (29,605 in Turkey and 3,581 in Syria) according to a provisional assessment, which could double according to the UN. Some 218,000 people would be mobilized on site in rescue operations and in the management of hundreds of thousands of survivors, according to AFAD.
icy cold and absence of sanitary
In the small town of Dogansehir, a few kilometers from Polat, the school and wedding hall lessons have turned into a refuge. “The deputy AKP [Party of Justice and Development, in power in Turkey] from here, Oznur çalik, came to visit us. She went around the camp, took photos in front of the tents, tightened us The hand by promising us that we would bring everything that we had asked within an hour … Since then, no news “, SUAT ENRAGE, 36, installed with his family in this small camp of around sixty people. “We are not lacking in food, but we lack warm clothes. 10 % of what we receive comes from the government. The rest, it is the population that brings us spontaneously,” he said.
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