that struck Turkey and Syria a week ago packed into crowded tents or lined up in the streets Monday for hot meals as the desperate search for survivors entered what was likely its last hours.
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake and its aftershocks struck southeastern Turkey and northern Syria on Feb. 6, reducing huge swaths of towns and cities to fragments of concrete and twisted metal. The death toll has surpassed 35,000.In some areas, search teams placed signs that read “ses yok” or “no sound” in front of buildings they had inspected for signs of life, HaberTurk television reported.
Some 100 kilometers from the epicenter, almost no houses were left standing in the village of Polat, where residents salvaged refrigerators, washing machines and other goods from wrecked homes. But Fuat Ekinci, a 55-year-old farmer, was reluctant to leave his home for western Turkey despite the destruction, saying he didn’t have the means to live elsewhere and had fields that need to be tended.
Meanwhile, rescue workers, including coal miners who secured salvage tunnels with wooden supports, found a woman alive Monday in the wreckage of a five-story building in Turkey’s Gaziantep province.newborn whose mother gave birth while trapped under the rubble of their home