Turkey and Syria crumble; a Massive Death Toll attracts Massive Help

By Deandrea Hamilton and Dana Malcolm

Editorial Staff

February 7, 2023 – More than 5,000 people are reported as dead and the casualty count is rapidly, heartbreakingly climbing in the wake of a massive earthquake in Turkey and Syria that leveled entire apartment buildings, cracked open roadways and fell centuries old structures. And now, rain is hampering the search and rescue efforts.

Turkey and Syria need a miracle and it seems the international community has banded together to make sure the neighbouring nations get one.

Just .2 shy of the highest listing on the Richter Scale, the 7.8 magnitude quake happened around 4 am Monday morning in Turkey (or nearly 8 pm Sunday local time) throwing people out of their beds and bringing apartments down on sleeping residents.

It rocked places as far as Lebanon and Israel which are up to 1300 miles away. An aftershock more powerful than the 2010 Haitian earthquake slammed the country just hours after compounding the devastation.

Help is on the way, some already there.

AP reports that the European Union, through 13 member countries have offered assistance including satellites shifted to the area for emergency mapping.  From Los Angeles Country, USA six specially trained dogs and 100 fire fighters and structural engineers are assembled for deployment.  Russia is coming too; Ten units and 300 people are en route to help in clearing debris and in the search for survivors.  Russia’s military will set up points to distribute humanitarian aid.

And there is more support; 21 rescuers and dogs from Greece; 150 engineers from Israel; $5 million and a 60 person search team from South Korea and Pakistan is sending in 50 to bolster the rescue team.

Britain is in talks with the UN says the news report about how to aid Syria, while 76 search and rescue specialists and equipment are already headed to Turkey to get people out while there is still time.

And list goes on and on, a heartening wave of help from a long list of countries including India, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, Japan, Switzerland, Lebanon, Germany, Austria, Spain, Poland, Romania, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Moldova, France, Egypt, Mexico, the Jordan, Italy and China all added to the money, food, humanitarian assistance and manpower needed to literally pull the two countries from under mounds and mounds of debris.

Videos of the wreckage show firefighters furiously trying to get people including babies out of flattened buildings. Historic landmarks are crumbled.

By 7:30 Monday morning Tayyip Ergodan, President of Turkey had said they needed aid from whoever could send it, it seems the call of a president in pain for his people has been vigorously answered.