The Turkish emergency service Afad estimated this Saturday at 40,642 fatalities from the earthquakes registered so far, the official Anadolu agency reported.
To these are added the 3,688 counted in Syria by the White Helmets rescue group, which operates in the northwestern opposition region, and the official Syrian agency SANA, which offers the count of all other areas under the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. .
Thirteen days after the incident, these data are only a provisional balance, since there are still tens of thousands of bodies under the rubble and various estimates predict that the final balance will be around or exceed 100,000 deaths.
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The number of wounded rose to 122,757 (108,000 in Turkey and 14,757 in Syria). According to Afad, some 260,000 homes have been destroyed in Ankara and 430,000 people have so far been evacuated by the Turkish authorities.
The population was surprised on the night of February 6 by a 7.8 magnitude earthquakewhich was followed hours later by another of 7.6 degrees, and thousands of aftershocks, in what is considered the worst humanitarian catastrophe that the region has experienced in more than a century
Students will be transferred from schools.
The Government of Istanbul announced this Saturday that more than 50,000 students from 93 city schools will be transferred starting next Monday to other educational centers in earthquake-proof buildings.
Experts have been warning for years that Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, could suffer a devastating earthquake at any time.
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“Starting Monday, February 20, 2023, our students from 93 schools and educational institutions in (buildings at) risk will be transferred to earthquake-proof schools,” the Istanbul Governor’s Office announced in a statement. In this way, “51,995 students and 2,765 teachers” they will have to change schools and continue their education in schools built with special technology to resist earthquakes, the note specifies.
The plan includes the demolition of 76 schools, while another 17 will be reformed and reinforced. This humanitarian catastrophe, considered the worst disaster suffered by the region in more than a century, has unleashed a virulent discussion over the lack of specific constructions to withstand an earthquake, and has sounded the alarm especially in Istanbul.
Official data indicates that in the city on the Bosphorus there are more than a million buildings, of which, according to experts, 250,000 would collapse in the event of a 7.5-magnitude earthquakewhile another 91,810 would suffer serious or very serious damage, and more than 167,000 would be left with medium-sized damage.