Turkiye Arrests Building Contractors Six Days After Devastating Earthquakes: Report
As of Sunday morning, the dead toll from Monday's earthquakes stood at 33,000, with another 80,000-plus injured, and it was bound to grow as bodies continued to emerge.
Six days after a pair of earthquakes ravaged southeast Turkey and northern Syria, Turkish officials detained or issued arrest warrants for 130 persons accused of being engaged in the construction of buildings that collapsed and crushed their inhabitants, news agency Associated Press reported.
As of Sunday morning, the dead toll from Monday's earthquakes stood at 33,000, with another 80,000-plus injured, and it was bound to grow as bodies continued to emerge.
As sadness gave way to wrath at the agonisingly delayed rescue attempts, the focus shifted to who was to blame for not adequately preparing residents in the earthquake-prone region, which includes an area of Syria that had already been devastated by years of civil conflict.
Despite the fact that Turkiye has construction norms that satisfy modern earthquake-engineering requirements on paper, they are rarely implemented, which explains why hundreds of structures have fallen onto their sides or pancaked downward upon occupants.
Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay announced late Saturday that warrants had been issued for the arrest of 131 persons accused of being responsible for building collapses.
Turkiye's justice minister has pledged to prosecute those involved, and prosecutors have begun collecting building samples for proof on building materials. The quakes were tremendous, but victims, experts, and citizens across Turkey blame poor construction for exacerbating the tragedy.
Authorities detained two persons in the province of Gaziantep on Sunday on suspicion of cutting down columns to make more room in a fallen building, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency.
Turkiye's Justice Ministry announced the creation of Earthquake Crimes Investigation Bureaus a day earlier. The bureaus would be responsible for identifying contractors and others responsible for building work, gathering evidence, instructing specialists such as architects, geologists, and engineers, and checking building permits and occupation permits.
Authorities apprehended a building contractor at Istanbul Airport on Friday before he could catch a flight out of the country. He was the builder of a magnificent 12-story skyscraper in Hatay province's ancient city of Antakya, the collapse of which killed an unimaginable number of people.
The detentions may help concentrate public rage against builders and contractors, diverting attention away from local and state officials who let the allegedly substandard builds to proceed.
Turkey's administration, already beleaguered by an economic slump and soaring inflation, will face legislative and presidential elections in May.
Survivors, many of whom have lost loved ones, have directed their fury and resentment onto officials as well. Rescue teams have been swamped by the massive devastation that has damaged roadways and airports, making a race against the time more more challenging.
Erdogan said earlier this week that the significant damage had slowed the early reaction. According to him, the worst-affected area spanned 500 kilometres (310 miles) in circumference and was home to 13.5 million Turkiye residents. During a tour to quake-damaged cities on Saturday, Erdogan said a calamity of this magnitude was unusual, and he called it the disaster of the century once more.
Rescuers, including personnel from foreign nations, continued to search the wreckage for other survivors who might be able to defeat the increasingly long odds. Thermal cameras were used to probe the mounds of concrete and metal, while rescuers requested stillness in order to hear the trapped victims' cries.
On Sunday, 151 hours after the earthquake, a 6-year-old kid was rescued from the rubble of his home in Adiyaman city. HaberTurk television showed the rescue live, showing the infant wrapped in a space blanket and being loaded into an ambulance. As a group of people cried out in excitement, a fatigued rescuer removed his surgical mask and took deep breaths.
Fahrettin Koca, Turkiye's health minister, uploaded a video of a small child rescued in a navy blue sweater. At the 150th hour, there is good news. Crews rescued him a short while ago. There is always hope! he said on Twitter.
A team of Italian and Turkish rescuers also succeeded in removing a 35-year-old man from the ruins in the hard-hit city of Antakya. The guy, Mustafa Sarigul, looked to be unharmed when he was carried on a stretcher to an ambulance 149 hours after the initial tremors struck, according to private NTV television.
A toddler was also released overnight in the village of Nizip in Gaziantep, according to the state-run Anadolu Agency, while a 32-year-old woman was saved from the remains of an eight-story building in Antakya. According to NTV, the woman, a teacher called Meltem, begged for tea as soon as she appeared.
NTV reported that attempts were ongoing in Kahramanmaras, near the epicentre of the initial 7.8 quake that struck early Monday morning, to locate a survivor spotted by sniffing dogs beneath a now-pancaked seven-story structure.
Those discovered alive, on the other hand, remained the unusual exception.
On Saturday, a massive impromptu graveyard was being built on the outskirts of Antakya. Backhoes and bulldozers excavated trenches in the field while vehicles and ambulances carrying black corpse bags arrived in droves. The hundreds of graves were marked with plain wooden planks laid vertically in the ground and spaced no more than 3 feet (a metre) apart.
The view of the situation in Syria across the border is less clear.
(With Inputs From AP)
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