Shoddy buildings will raise Turkish quake death toll

ALTHOUGH the Turks have improved their search and rescue techniques since 1999, when more than 17,000 people died in the Izmit earthquake, there are fears that low-grade construction standards will result in many unnecessary deaths from yesterday's quake near Lake Van in eastern Turkey.

First reports from the worst-hit towns of Van and Ercis, where the quake shattered buildings at 1.40 pm local time on Sunday, suggested only a hundred or so immediate deaths.

But as night drew in, and the homeless gathered around camp fires in near-freezing conditions, eyewitnesses spoke of hundreds still trapped in pancaked apartment blocks. "People are in agony, we can hear their screams. We need urgent help," a local mayor, Veysel Keser, is quoted as saying in The Guardian.

In the city of Ercis, a town of 75,000 people, a student dormitory was among 80 or more collapsed buildings. "There are so many dead," said the mayor, Zulfikar Arapoglu, quoted in The Times. "Several buildings have collapsed. There is too much destruction."

There was some confusion overnight regarding the need for help. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who toured the area by helicopter, was reported as telling local TV: "We need tents urgently and rescue teams. We don't have any ambulances, and we have only one hospital."

But BBC News quote Erdogan thanking other countries for their offers of help but saying that Turkey can cope with the disaster on its own.

Expert opinion suggests the death toll will inevitably rise.

The head of Turkey's seismology institute, Mustafa Erdik, said: "We estimate around 1,000 buildings are damaged and our estimate is for hundreds of lives lost - it could be 500 or 1,000."

FIRST FACTS ABOUT THE QUAKE:

• The epicentre was about 16km northeast of Van. It measured 7.2 on the Richter scale and was followed by more than 100 aftershocks.
• Turkey's disastrous quake in 1999, centred on Ismit - not to be confused with Izmir - was 7.6 on the Richter scale.
• The freezing cold is a risk to those made homeless in Sunday's quake. Van is 5,740ft above sea level and night-time temperatures are near freezing at this time of year.
• Turkish TV reported yesterday that as many as 150 inmates of a prison in Van escaped after one of the walls collapsed. But a prison official said later that the number of escapees was closer to 50 and that many of them returned to the jail after checking that their families were safe.
• Despite its sour relations with Turkey over the affair of the Gaza Freedom flotilla, Israel was among the first nations to offer assistance

 ·