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Turkey Syria earthquake: What it’s like helping with the rescue efforts right now

时间：2024-09-22 02:13:22 来源：American news

Within 24 hours of receiving news of a devastating earthquake hitting Turkey and Syria, over 100 rescue workers from fire departments in California and Virginia were on a plane to assist in one of Turkey’s hardest-hit cities.

The American rescue team is working in Adiyaman, Turkey, where they are in a race against time to save as many people as possible. As of Monday, the earthquake has claimed more than 36,000 lives in Turkey and Syria combined.

Stephen Allen, disaster lead of USAID’s efforts in the area, spoke to us about what it’s like on the ground in Adiyaman and the challenges rescuers are facing, both there and in neighboring Syria. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited and condensed for clarity:

Shirin Ali: What was the process of assembling an American rescue team, getting them to Turkey, and getting started on rescue efforts?

Stephen Allen: We ended up in Adiyaman because the Turkish government asked us to come here, because it is one of the hardest-hit regions from the earthquake. It’s an area where there wasn’t as much support beforehand, it’s a little bit more remote, a bit farther away, up in the mountains and colder. As soon as the teams arrived in Turkey, we drove all night to get to Adiyaman and they immediately got to work.

From the time that we got to Adiyaman, while part of the team set up our base-camp operations, part of the team immediately began to survey and look to see what they could do to help and where they could jump in. Since then, the teams have been working 24 hours, sending out survey teams that go and see if there are buildings that have collapsed where they can begin looking for people, and if they’re able to find signs of life. They take out dogs, special equipment, and they have special cameras. If they are able to find a viable sign of life, then they can mobilize a rescue team which comes with heavier tools to begin digging out through the rubble.

Can you describe the level of damage?

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Here in Adiyaman, when you’re driving or walking into town, it’s almost unimaginable the level of destruction that this town is facing. Every block when you’re downtown has large glass buildings and six- and seven-story apartment buildings. When they collapse, they create an enormous rubble pile that then also creates very complicated areas for people to dig in and to cut through concrete, rebar, and other things that are inside. It’s very tough and grueling work.

It’s pretty cold in southern Turkey and western Syria right now, temperatures dropping below freezing. How is that impacting rescue efforts?

Hypothermia, for people who are still trapped, is a big factor that we’re worried about. The teams themselves are equipped for it, they can handle it because they’ve got the right equipment and the right gear. But it is really hard on the people who were affected by the earthquake. Turkish people who live here in this town, they’ve had to deal with just very harsh conditions.

It’s been about a week since USAID touched down in Turkey. Has the team been successful in finding and removing earthquake victims from the rubble?

The people who are left in the rubble at this point are the ones who are the hardest to get. They’re very deep in the rubble—anyone who was easier to get out was rescued in the first 24 to 48 hours. At this point, it really is down to the teams that have the most experience with very, very difficult recovery and rescue operations. These two teams have that, they are still working now, as we speak, out in the field surveying and looking at specific sites where they think there might be viable signs of life.

How have you been working with locals?

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A lot of the sites that are determined are investigated and surveyed because there’s a reference from someone. A family member will say, I know that my family was inside this building, or maybe I’ve talked to them, heard from them, had some indication of someone being alive. They are often the ones who bring these cases to a centralized dispatch point and then they are assigned to be evaluated, that’s a critical part of it.

On a human level, it’s heartbreaking. I was with the team when they were digging through a collapse of a six-story building, and friends of people who were inside, family members of people who were inside, neighbors, people who just knew of people in the building, had gathered outside and they had pictures of their loved ones. They were telling us about who was inside, and it’s very difficult for them, especially, to know at the end of the day that the likelihood they’re going to see those people alive again is very low. And that is very hard. The teams are focused on doing the best they can to rescue those who are still alive and save the ones who can still be saved.

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Syria was also severely impacted by the earthquake—do you know what rescue efforts are being deployed there?

Turkey is where we have our search and rescue team and it’s where I am, but the scope of what we’re dealing with doesn’t recognize political borders or boundaries. The scale of destruction in northwest Syria has also been massive. The human loss as well. But the situation in Syria is a little bit different, since we’ve had ongoing humanitarian work in the country for the last 10 years because of the ongoing civil war. So we have an established network of partners, NGOs and UN agencies we fund and have been working with. When the earthquake struck, even though we couldn’t be there ourselves, we were able to mobilize through our partners immediately. So our partners immediately switched their funding toward emergency response. We’ve just announced $85 million for the earthquake crisis that includes Syria. We don’t restrict where our partners can work in Syria and we don’t restrict any kind of humanitarian work they can do. We’ve really done the best that we can to help them as they’ve also dealt with this crisis.

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There have been reports of humanitarian efforts struggling to access earthquake-impacted areas of Syria. Has USAID experienced that?

The reality is that Syria is an environment that has access challenges that make it very difficult to get things around, even on the best of days. In the middle of an earthquake response, it’s also very difficult. It is complicated to get supplies from one side of a control line to the other, so if you want to get something from the government side into the opposition control side, it’s very tough. We have relied on Turkey to bring in supplies across the border into northwest Syria for years and we are continuing to do that. In the initial days after the earthquake there definitely were some challenges along the border, there were main border closures, crossings were affected by the earthquake, officials who ran the crossings were affected by the earthquake. Those things have been addressed and are being ironed out. There is assistance and aid going across the border from Turkey into Syria, it’s certainly happening—but absolutely, it’s been a challenge.

Northwest Syria is the part of Syria that before the earthquake had the highest humanitarian need. It’s a part of Syria where people have fled from across the rest of the country and had been displaced into for the last, almost, decade. It’s a place where people have lived a very difficult life, to put it bluntly, and to be affected by an earthquake on top of that is a double calamity. Now, the type of infrastructure in northwest Syria, it’s not quite the same as the infrastructure in Turkey. The level of destruction is certainly significant, but there’s not as many high-rise buildings or dense urban apartment buildings. So it looks a little bit different, but it is severe. People have been displaced again, after fleeing war, and now they’re displaced by an earthquake, which is really an unimaginable tragedy.

What’s the biggest challenge USAID rescue workers are facing right now?

I think the biggest challenge, hands down, is just the scale of what we’re facing. The level of destruction is massive and there are so many sites to go through, and that’s just in one town. There’s many more towns like this where other crews are working, where other countries have set up search and rescue teams. The scale of this is so massive.

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