At least 62 people were killed and nearly 900 injured in the devastating Friday earthquake in Turkey, the country’s Minister of Environment and Urban Planning, Murat Kurum, told N1 on Sunday evening.
Kurum said that there are many volunteers on the ground looking for survivors in the destroyed buildings and stressed that it is important that rescue teams do not risk their own lives as well in the process.
RELATED NEWS
“We have to treat the wounded quickly. In the past three days, there have been over 900 quakes. It is obvious that these earthquakes will not stop happening. We have closed down numerous locations and fenced them off so that no one can approach them and so that people would not be endangered. We saved 104 people from the rubble,” the Turkish minister said.
N1’s team in Izmir reported that there are buildings in Izmir that initially seem unscathed by the quakes but are, in fact, still shaking and represent a danger to the population.
The Secretary General of the IHH Humanitarian Relief Foundation, Durmus Aydin, told N1 that there were 33 rescue teams from his NGO at the scene alone, which amounts to more than 2,000 people.
“They work alongside AFAD, the government's disaster organization, we also have rescue dogs and they are searching, trying to find living people under the rubble,” he said.
“We are in a race against time,” he added, explaining that the first 72 hours are key after such catastrophes.
