February 13, 2023, 3:55 AMTurkish Zehra Kurukafa walks past a destroyed house in the village of Polat, Turkey, Sunday, Feb. 12, 2023. Five days after two powerful earthquakes hours apart caused scores of buildings to collapse, killing thousands of people and leaving millions homeless, rescuers were still pulling unlikely survivors from the ruins. – Thousands who survived the earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria a week ago are pondering what comes next.
On Monday rescuers from Istanbul pulled a woman named Naide Umay from a collapsed building in the hard-hit city of Antakya. Earlier, a 40-year-old woman was rescued from the wreckage of a 5-story building in the town of Islahiye, in Gaziantep province, while a 60-year old was rescued in Besni, in Adiyaman province.
Resident Zehra Kurukafa said not enough tents had arrived, forcing up to four families to share the tents that were available. “We’re going away but we have no idea what will happen when we get there” Bozkurt said."We have no goal. Even if there was what good will it be after this hour? I no longer have my father or my uncle. What do I have left?” he said.
Volunteers from across Turkey have mobilized to help millions of survivors, including a group of volunteer chefs and restaurant owners who served traditional food such as beans and rice and lentil soup for survivors in downtown Adiyaman. David Alexander, a professor of emergency planning and management at University College London, agreed, saying the window for pulling people alive from the rubble is “almost at an end.”