Rescue crews in Turkey and Syria worked through the night on February 9, 2023, as the death toll from the 7.8 magnitude earthquake surpassed 15,000, making it the deadliest quake globally in over a decade. Hope for finding more survivors faded amid freezing temperatures and widespread destruction across a region already devastated by Syria’s civil war.
Search efforts continue as hope dims
Stretched rescue teams from more than two dozen countries joined tens of thousands of local emergency personnel in the search for survivors. But the window for finding people alive was closing fast. In the Turkish city of Malatya, journalist Ozel Pikal, who also assisted in rescue efforts, described a grim scene.
“There is no hope left in Malatya as of today, thus today is not a good day,” Pikal said. “No one is emerging from the wreckage alive.”
Pikal witnessed eight bodies removed from a collapsed building. The remains were laid side by side on the ground, wrapped in blankets, as rescuers waited for funeral vehicles. He said a hotel in the city had collapsed, with more than a hundred people possibly trapped inside.
Temperatures dropped to minus 6 degrees Celsius (21 Fahrenheit). Pikal believes at least some victims may have frozen to death. “The cold prevents our hands from picking up anything,” he said. “Working tools are required.”
Government response under scrutiny
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited a tent city in Kahramanmaras, near the epicenter, where displaced residents were sheltering. He acknowledged early shortcomings in the government’s response but promised that no one would “be abandoned in the streets.”
Many survivors spent nights in cars, outside, or in public shelters. Aysan Kurt, 27, told the Associated Press: “We lack everything, a tent, a heating source, and other essentials. Our kids are in terrible shape. We are all getting drenched in the rain, and our kids are outside in the cold. We won’t die from the cold; we didn’t die from hunger or the earthquake.”
The disaster management agency in Turkey reported 8,500 deaths in the country. In Syria, the Health Ministry said over 1,200 people died in government-held areas. The White Helmets, a volunteer first-responder group, estimated at least 1,400 fatalities in the rebel-controlled northwest.
Syria’s war compounds the crisis
The earthquake struck a region already shattered by more than a decade of civil war. Millions had fled their homes in Syria, seeking safety in Turkey. Now many of those refugees were among the dead.
Syrian officials said the Bab al-Hawa border crossing was used to return the bodies of more than 100 Syrians who died in Turkey for burial. Mazen Alloush, an officer on the Syrian side of the border, said twenty more bodies were on their way. All were Syrian refugees who had fled the civil war.
Aid efforts in Syria faced severe obstacles. The ongoing conflict and the isolation of the rebel-held border region, surrounded by government forces backed by Russia, hindered deliveries. Western sanctions related to the war have made Syria a global pariah, further complicating relief operations.
Rare rescues amid the rubble
Despite the overwhelming tragedy, a few rescues offered moments of hope. Polish rescuers in Turkey pulled nine people alive from the rubble, including parents with two children and a 13-year-old girl from the ruins in Besni. Two firefighters told Polish TVN24 that the cold weather was working against them, but some survivors may have benefited from being trapped in bed with warm covers during the early-morning quake.
In Kahramanmaras, three-year-old Arif Kaan was rescued nearly two days after the earthquake. Emergency workers carefully hacked rubble away from the boy, whose lower body was pinned under concrete slabs and twisted rebar. They covered his torso with a blanket to keep him warm. His father, Ertugrul Kisi, who had himself been rescued earlier, sobbed as his son was freed and loaded into an ambulance.
A Turkish television reporter exclaimed: “For now, the name of hope in Kahramanmaras is Arif Kaan.”
In northwest Syria, residents of the village of Jinderis found a wailing infant on Monday, still attached by umbilical cord to her dead mother. The newborn was the only member of her family to survive a building collapse.
But such stories were rare. More than two days after the pre-dawn earthquake, thousands of buildings lay in ruins, and the cold continued to tighten its grip. The death toll was expected to rise significantly. The 2011 earthquake near Japan, which triggered a tsunami, killed nearly 20,000 people. Turkey and Syria have not given figures for the number of people still missing.
