Turkey Picks Up Pieces After Latest Devastating Quake

Villagers gather around a camp fire amongst tents and debris of what used to be houses in the village of Okcular on Monday. (AFP/Getty Images)

The search for survivors of a large earthquake in eastern Turkey that buried scores of villagers in their sleep has been called off, government officials said.

Some 51 people were killed by the quake that struck Elazig Province at 4:32 local time on Monday morning (9:32 p.m. Sunday night). Dozens of others are being treated for injuries.

About eight hours after the magnitude 6.0 quake struck, the search for victims ended.

“According to the information we have, no one remains under the rubble. The work has been ended,” an official from the governor’s office told the AFP news agency.

As night fell, survivors of the quake sought shelter from freezing temperatures in tents distributed by the Red Cross.
Villages that had already been crushed by the quake shook with over 100 aftershocks throughout the day, the largest of which was 5.5 on the Richter scale.

Elazig Governor Muammer Erol blamed flimsy housing in the most impoverished areas of the province for many of the casualties resulting from the quake.

“Villages consisting mainly of mud-brick houses have been damaged, but we have minimal damage such as cracks in buildings made of cement or stone,” he said.

In the worst hit village of Okcular, a mountain settlement that is home to 900 people, some 30 houses were demolished, according to rescue teams.

“The village is totally flattened,” Hasan Demirdag, Okcular’s administrator, told media.

The epicenter of the quake was in the village of Basyurt, near the town of Kovancilar, where many people were sleeping as their homes collapsed around them.

Following the rescue effort, graves were quickly dug and the bodies of victims were buried by Monday afternoon, according to local Muslim custom.

A delegation of senior government officials visited many of the villages that were worst hit. The prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, has promised to build quake-proof houses in the region.

Deadly earthquakes are common in Turkey, as the country sits on several active fault lines.

In August and November 1999, two powerful quakes claimed the lives of roughly 20,000 people in the country’s northwest.
Four years later, an earthquake measuring 6.4 brought down a school dormitory in Bingol Province, killing 83 children.

In 2007, an earthquake measuring 5.7 damaged buildings in Elazig.