Aegean Sea earthquake: crews search for survivors amid construction rubble in Turkey | World

Izmir city officials said 25 people died in Turkey’s coastal regions. Two teenagers died on the island of Samos, Greece, after a wall fell on them.

• The worst affected city is on the Turkish coast; to see photos

In addition to these dead people, another 804 were injured by the impact of the earthquake.

Rescue teams managed to remove a mother and three children from the rubble on Saturday. All four spent nearly 18 hours in prison.

At least 20 buildings have been destroyed in the city of Izmir. During rescue work, there were often blows.

The epicenter was in the Aegean Sea. The magnitude of the earthquake, recorded ten kilometers deep, was evaluated by the American Geophysical Institute (USGS) at 7.0.

The earthquake caused a rise in sea level, which flooded the streets of Seferihisar, a Turkish city located at the epicenter. The tide also swept the coast of Samos.

The western region of the Turkish coast has a high population density. It was the most affected area.

The country’s television channels showed images of great clouds of dust, while the population ran into the streets in panic. In an image captured by a neighbor, a building collapsed with great ease, while pedestrians shouted, “My God!”

“We live in Izmir, the climate is mild, we can spend the night like this, tomorrow too, but it is difficult to project in the long term, there is a feeling of powerlessness,” 51-year-old retired military officer Cemalettin Enginyurt told AFP.

Several hospitals in the city, overloaded by the pandemic, have transferred patients to other places to receive the victims of the earthquake.

The earthquake was also felt in Istanbul, the economic capital of the country, shaken 20 years ago by a strong earthquake. But no damage was found in the city, according to the provincial governor.

‘Earthquake Diplomacy’

Turkey and Greece are committed to helping each other. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said that a social network had spoken by phone with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Edogan to express his condolences.

“The fact that two neighbors show solidarity in these difficult times has more value than many other things,” Erdogan replied.

This promise of mutual aid recalls the aid that Greece offered Turkey after the 1999 earthquake, which left 17,000 dead, a gesture that allowed relations between the two rival countries to resume. This led some experts to coin the phrase “seismic diplomacy.”

France joined this solidarity movement, offering aid to both countries, in the midst of a crisis with Turkey over diplomatic and geopolitical issues.

Both Turkey and Greece are in one of the most active seismic zones in the world. In Turkey, in addition to the 1999 earthquake, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook the Van province, killing more than 600 people, and last January another 6.7 killed nearly 40 people in the eastern province of Elazig.

In Greece, the last earthquake with deaths occurred in July 2017, on the island of Kos, near Samos.