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ISTANBUL: A powerful earthquake rocked Turkey and Greece on Friday, killing at least six people, razing buildings and creating a storm surge that flooded the streets near the Turkish resort city of Izmir.
Greek public television said the quake also triggered a mini tsunami on the island of Samos in the eastern Aegean Sea, damaging homes and injuring at least four people.
The United States Geological Survey said the 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck 14 kilometers from the Greek city of Karlovasi on Samos.
The Turkish government’s disaster agency reported a magnitude less than 6.6 for the earthquake, while Greece’s seismological agency said it measured 6.7.
Much of the damage in Turkey occurred around the Aegean Sea resort town of Izmir, which has about three million inhabitants.
Woman taken alive
Images from the popular vacation destination showed collapsed apartment buildings and stunned people trying to make their way through debris piled up in the streets.
“Oh my God!” A passerby shouted near a collapsed building in an image that went viral in Turkey.
In another, a crowd cried out in relief and erupted in applause as a crying woman was dragged out alive.
Izmir Mayor Tunc Soyer told CNN Turk that 20 buildings had collapsed and officials said they were focusing their rescue efforts on 12 of them.
Turkey’s disaster agency reported the deaths of six people and said more than 200 were injured.
But the scenes of devastation suggested the death toll could rise.
Rescuers using chainsaws
Images on social media showed water running through the streets of one of the cities near Izmir due to an apparent storm surge.
Thick white smoke billowed from various parts of the city, where buildings had collapsed.
Aerial footage from Turkish television NTV showed whole apples turned to rubble.
The footage showed rescuers assisted by residents and police using chainsaws as they tried to make their way through the rubble of a seven-story building that had collapsed.
Rescuers called for silence, looking for signs of survivors, clearing rocks and other debris in a human chain.
As the hours passed, the governor of the region, Yavuz Kosger, said that 70 people had been pulled alive from the rubble.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tweeted that he was ready to help “with all means available to our state.”
‘It was chaos’
On the Greek island of Samos, near the epicenter of the earthquake, people ran into the streets in panic.
“The walls of some houses have collapsed and several buildings are damaged,” the island’s deputy mayor, Michalis Mitsios, was quoted as saying by public broadcaster ERT.
“It was chaos,” added Deputy Mayor Giorgos Dionysiou.
“We have never experienced anything like this.”
The Greek civil protection agency told Samos residents in a text message to “stay outdoors and away from buildings.”
Greece and Turkey are located in one of the most active earthquake zones in the world.
The two restless neighbors also suffer from historically poor relationships despite being members of the NATO military alliance.
But the earthquake saw an outbreak of what experts immediately called “earthquake diplomacy” after the foreign ministers of the two countries promised to help each in a rare phone call.
“Greek Foreign Minister (Nikos) Dendias called our Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to wish him well. Both ministers stressed that they were ready to help each other in case of need, ”said the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
Erdogan’s top aide, Fahrettin Altun, tweeted that the disaster “reminds us once again how close we are despite our policy differences.”
Some of the strongest earthquakes in the world have been recorded along a fault that runs through Turkey to Greece.
In 1999, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck northwestern Turkey, killing more than 17,000 people, including 1,000 in Istanbul.
Another earthquake in 2011 in the southeastern province of Van caused more than 600 deaths.
In Greece, the latest deadly earthquake killed two people on the island of Kos, near Samos, in July 2017.
