HARROWING REALITY
We all screamed, but that’s not going to stop an earthquake, reveals mum-of-four hit by Turkey quakes
TRAUMATISED and hungry, a family of earthquake victims prepare for another freezing night sheltering under a plastic sheet — close to the ruins of what was their home.
Trying to brew warming chai tea on a wood-burning stove, mum-of-four Muazzez Gezer recalled how she dragged her pyjama-clad children to the street.
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She said: “We were all asleep. Then the walls of our house began cleaving.
“The shaking got faster and the children began to scream and cry. We all screamed — but that’s not going to stop an earthquake.”
They escaped from their crumbling home as breeze blocks and roof tiles crashed down around them.
With dozens of others from their poverty-blighted neighbourhood, they are now homeless in temperatures plunging as low as -5C.
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They live in Gaziantep, a city of two million people in southern Turkey, close to the epicentre of Monday’s first monster quake.
It was followed by another, and then hundreds of aftershocks.
Another mum, 42-year-old Nazli Bulut Yas, told me: “We have no idea when the children will be back at school. But right now we just need bread and water to stay alive.”
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Around 300,000 people are believed to have displaced, while the official death toll in Turkey and neighbouring Syria yesterday climbed past 11,700.
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The toll is sure to rise further as wreckage is cleared.
Yet hope still remains. Here in Gaziantep Ibrahim Karapirli, wife Pinar and their 18-month-old twins were pulled from the remains of a six-storey block of flats despite being entombed for 40 hours.
In Haram, northern Syria, young siblings identified only as Mariam and Ilaaf were saved after 36 hours under the rubble, with Mariam bravely shielding her little brother’s head.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said rescue teams from 18 nations are now in the region.
The frantic search for survivors has been joined by sniffer dogs brought to Turkey by a 77-strong UK squad.
London Fire Brigade Urban Search and Rescue responders in bright orange uniforms were seen with the animals combing through rubble in Antakya, southern Turkey.
In Hatay Province, Abdulalim Muaini was wedged between the floor and a concrete slap for a heart-breaking 48 hours behind the body of his wife Esra.
He was saved after reaching out a hand in the darkness when rescuers shone a torch into the wreckage.
He was eventually pulled free and treated by medics just feet away from where the bodies of daughters Mahsen and Besira lay wrapped in blankets.
Syrian charity group the White Helmets miraculously pulled a family of four from a mass of tangled concrete and metal in the village of Bisnia, with crowds cheering as a little girl and her brother were taken to ambulances.
However, there is growing anger and despair about the slow pace of rescue efforts in some areas.
As freezing temperatures make finding survivors in ruined homes less likely, attention is turning the hundreds of thousands left hungry and sleeping in makeshift shelters.
There were claims Turkey had failed to prepare for a quake “for 20 years” and had wasted the emergency funds.
The country levied a so-called “earthquake tax” after a 1999 quake killed 17,000 people.
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The £3.8billion raised was supposed to be used to prevent future disasters and fund emergency response teams.
But opposition parties accused Mr Erdogan of failing to use the tax properly — resulting to a sluggish response to the latest horror.
Rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu claimed: “If there is one person responsible for this, it is Erdogan.”
Mr Erdogan, who visited survivors for the first time yesterday, insisted the country’s 60,000 rescue workers would be better equipped.
He said: “We had some problems in airports and roads but we are better today. We will be better tomorrow and later. We still have some issues with fuel but we will overcome those too.”
Meanwhile it emerged ex-Newcastle winger Christian Atsu was still missing, despite previous reports he had been pulled from rubble and taken to hospital.
Volkan Demirel, director at Atsu’s club Hatayspor, said: “There is no information on his whereabouts yet, we don’t know where he is. It’s not the case that he was pulled out or taken anywhere else.”
It also emerged that in Syria survivors faced fresh horror two hours after disaster struck when ruthless President Bashar al-Assad’s forces shelled a badly damaged rebel-held area.
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Britain’s Foreign Secretary James Cleverly described the attack on Marea, 70 miles south of the quake’s epicentre, as “completely unacceptable”.
MP Alicia Kearns, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee, described it as a “truly callous and heinous attack”.
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