Turkey stops searching for quake survivors

PanARMENIAN.Net - The death toll from last week’s earthquake in southeast Turkey rose to 596 Sunday, October 30, the day after authorities stopped searching for survivors and focused on helping thousands of homeless families in crisis.

In Ercis, the town hit hardest by the 7.2 magnitude quake that devastated Van province on October 23, some shops reopened on Sunday, electricity was switched back on in parts of town and one bank’s ATM started working.

But with barely any of Ercis’s nearly 100,000 residents ready to return to their damaged homes with strong aftershocks still rattling the area, life is anything but normal. One aftershock Sunday morning registered at magnitude 5.3.

Winter is fast approaching, temperatures plunge at night, and young and old in particular are falling sick in tent encampments set up by relief agencies on the outskirts of town.

The government’s disaster management website said more than 43,000 tents had been handed out in Van. Officials say that is more than needed because people whose homes are not so badly damaged are demanding tents as they feel safer under canvas.

Many people were queuing to register for tents Sunday, a first step to having an inspection done of their home, as authorities say they will hand them out only after verifying that a building is too risky to live in, Reuters reported.

The relief operation is politically sensitive as the southeast is where most of Turkey’s Kurdish minority lives, and the army has been fighting a separatist insurgency there that has cost more than 40,000 lives since it first erupted in 1984.

After criticism in the first days of the disaster, state authorities cranked up relief operations, asking for foreign help providing tents, containers and prefabricated houses.