The number of dead in the earthquake, which hit Turkey and Syria, rose tonight (between Wednesday and Thursday) to 15,000, with most of the dead found, more than 12,000 in Turkey and the rest in Syria.
The numbers, it seems, will go on and on as long as the rescue efforts of the local and foreign teams that joined them continue.
Meanwhile, as the extent of the disaster becomes clear, criticism is beginning to be heard that poor enforcement of the regulations contributed to the collapse of many buildings that were supposed to withstand the earthquake.
An attempt to find a sign of life in the ruins, photo: Avi Cohen
Despite the freezing cold, some residents of the neighborhoods in southeastern Turkey, whose houses collapsed in the earthquake and were left homeless - refuse to leave the area until they know what happened to their loved ones.
Every person that is pulled alive from the ruins and how rare it is as the hours pass, gives them hope for a miracle that their loved ones will be found alive.
But miracles are becoming more and more rare and an hour after a person is found alive the mood returns to somber with the Sisyphean work of the rescue teams at the destruction sites.
When a survivor is found, he is immediately transferred to the medical teams, who just want to have more work than waiting in anticipation for survivors, when the body bags are filling up at a high rate.
The local medical teams, some of whom are also waiting for news for their loved ones, say that these are injuries such as: broken bones, broken neck, head injuries.
and hypothermia.
Extensive criticism
The President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who came yesterday to closely observe the rescue efforts, said that they will not stop the efforts until no one remains under the ruins of the thousands of collapsed buildings.
But in the meantime, the anger of the residents, especially in the new neighborhoods, is growing because there was poor enforcement of the strict building regulations that came into force in relation to earthquakes in 2002, three years after the earthquake in Izmit.
The search for the missing continues, photo: Avi Cohen
Local media emphasize that although the tremors were strong, experts estimate that properly constructed buildings should have been able to remain standing. This can be seen in new neighborhoods from recent years, where sporadic cases of building collapses are seen, although the noise intensity was high, but not necessarily sufficient to bring down buildings that were built Well, when in most places the level of shaking was less than the maximum, most of the buildings that collapsed did not meet the building standards for an earthquake.
Construction regulations have been tightened in recent years also following the 1999 earthquake around the city of Izmit, in the northwest of the country, where 17,000 people were killed.
The latest rules require buildings in earthquake-prone areas to use high-quality concrete reinforced with steel bars to effectively absorb the impact of earthquakes, but there have been claims that these rules have been poorly enforced.
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