Looting, sanitation add to earthquake rescuers’ burden in Turkey

Antakya, Turkey:

Volunteers struggling to find at least one survivor in Turkey’s quake-hit city of Antakya said on Saturday that devastation and sanitation problems were adding to their difficult task.

One resident, who was searching for a companion buried in a collapsed building, said he had seen looting in the first days before leaving the city after Monday’s quake.

“People were breaking windows and fences of shops and cars,” said Mehmet Bok, 26, who is now back in Antakya and searching for a co-worker in a collapsed building.

German aid organizations halted rescue operations in the quake zone on Saturday, citing security problems and reports of clashes and gunfire between groups of people.

Turkish officials have not commented on any unrest, but President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday that the government would strictly deal with looting and other criminal behaviour, noting that a state of emergency had been declared.

The death toll in Turkey and Syria has crossed 25,300.

Another rescuer, Gizem from the southeastern province of Sanliurfa, said he had also seen looters in Antakya over four days.

“We can’t intervene much because most robbers carry knives. They caught one robber today, people chased him,” he said in the city.

When she arrived, she described Antakya as a place of death and destruction. “We couldn’t hold back our tears,” she said as ambulance sirens blared in the background.

“If people don’t die here under the debris, they will die of injuries, if not they will die of infection. There are no toilets here. It is a big problem,” she said, adding that there were not enough bodies for all the dead. Bag.

“There are dead bodies lying in the streets, with only blankets on them.”

The townspeople were wearing masks to hide the smell of death.

Others expressed concerns about sanitation, particularly the insufficient number of working toilets.

There were long lines at makeshift mobile toilets, but many people said they were simply looking for a hiding place, complaining of a foul smell.

“I think what is needed most right now is hygiene products. We have problems with toilets, I am afraid that some disease will spread,” said one person, who declined to be named and who Traveled from Antalya to help with rescue operations.

He said there was little co-ordination, everyone was doing what they could to save lives and some collapsed buildings were still untouched in the streets.

“We’ve been digging for hours and hours,” he said, describing pulling alive from the rubble overnight a 56-year-old woman, her face covered in dust, who had fallen into the stairwell of an apartment building.

We have retrieved around 150-200 bodies.”

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