Eight bodies came out of a building in Malatya wrapped in blankets. They were left on the ground. Waiting for funeral cars.
That is what journalist Ozel Pikal saw. He helped with the rescue efforts. He said some of those victims may have frozen to death. The temperature had dropped to minus 6 degrees Celsius.
“There is no hope left in Malatya as of today, thus today is not a good day,” Pikal said. “No one is emerging from the wreckage alive.”
That statement, from a man who was pulling bodies from rubble, captures where things stand on February 9, 2023. The death toll from the earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on Monday, February 6, has passed 15,000. Tens of thousands are injured. Many more are still missing. This is the deadliest earthquake the planet has seen in over a decade.
Rescue crews from more than two dozen countries are on the ground. Aid has poured in from around the world. But the 7.8 magnitude quake flattened thousands of buildings across a wide area, including remote parts of Syria. Getting help to the people who need it has become a grinding, slow ordeal.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited a tent city in Kahramanmaras, where people who lost their homes are sheltering. He acknowledged shortcomings in the response. He promised no one would be left abandoned.
In Syria, the situation is worse. The civil war has been running for years. It complicates every aspect of the rescue effort. The Syrian Health Ministry reported over 1,200 deaths in government-held areas. The White Helmets, the volunteer rescue group operating in opposition-held territory, are working under conditions that are hard to describe. Roads are cut. Supplies are blocked. Politics gets in the way of saving lives.
The cold is killing people who survived the collapse. That is the detail that sticks. Minus 6 degrees Celsius. People trapped under concrete slabs, alive after the quake, dying from exposure before anyone can reach them. Pikal watched it happen. He said the hope is gone.
That is the fact that matters most right now. The search continues. Teams are still digging. But the window for finding people alive is closing fast, if it has not already closed in places like Malatya. The numbers will keep climbing. The bodies will keep coming out wrapped in blankets, left on the ground, waiting.
