Kindgo
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http://www.msnbc.com/news/907611.asp?0cv=CB10
Deadly quake rocks southeast Turkey
More than 100 students buried in collapsed school dormitory
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ANKARA, Turkey, May 1 — A strong earthquake killed at least 46 people in southeastern Turkey early Thursday and toppled a school dormitory, trapping more than 100 students under debris, officials said.
‘As the hours go by, the news from Bingol gets more sad.’
— BINGOL MAYOR FEYZULLAH KARAASLAN
PUBLIC WORKS and Housing Minister Zeki Ergezen said the estimated death toll stood at 150, and private television NTV reported that 105 bodies had already reached the city’s morgue. The report could not be independently confirmed.
Crews were working to rescue up to 140 primary and middle school students still buried under the four-story dormitory that completely collapsed, said Minister Ali Coskun from Bingol.
Coskun said at least 55 children had so far been rescued from the rubble. Five students were found dead in the rubble, Bingol Mayor Feyzullah Karaalsan told The Associated Press.
The magnitude-6.4 earthquake struck the region around 3:27 a.m. (0027 GMT) Thursday and was centered just outside Bingol, 700 kilometers (430 miles) east of Ankara, the Kandilli seismology center in Istanbul said.
Coskun said 46 people had so far been confirmed dead in the area. Karaaslan said the toll was expected to rise.
“As the hours go by, the news from Bingol gets more sad. We estimate the death toll to be around 150, there are about 300 injured,” he said, adding that soldiers were on their way from the capital Ankara to help with the rescue operations.
WORKING THROUGH DEBRIS
Civil defense and mountaineers with earthquake-rescue experience were also on their way to Bingol, a city of 250,000. At least 25 buildings and a bridge had collapsed in the center of the city.
Rescue officials were still unable to reach many villages in the area.
Soldiers, rescue workers and ordinary citizens worked their way through the debris to try to rescue students still believed to be alive from the school’s dormitory. The Anatolia news agency said voices of the trapped children could be heard from under the debris, while soldiers tried to prevent hundreds of desperate relatives from approaching the collapsed building.
Eleven-year-old Mustafa Gunala said he was saved by the school’s janitor who guided him and a group of students out of the rubble.
“I didn’t understand what happened. I saw the ceiling coming toward me,” Gunala told Anatolia.
Meanwhile parents questioned the quality of the school’s construction.
“The stable I built did not collapse, but the school did,” Gunala’s father, Abdullah Gunala said.
State television TRT broadcast footage of a soldier carrying a boy out from the school’s wreckage, amid cheers from onlookers.
The boy could be heard shouting “baba!” or “father” in Turkish.
PLEA FOR HELP
“May God save us from the worse,” said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a news conference in Ankara. “My hope is that that we end the rescue efforts in a happy way and we don’t come across a sad outcome regarding our young ones.”
Doctors at Bingol’s state hospital appealed for help to deal with the crisis.
“We need every kind of help,” said Ilhan Cokabay, chief doctor at the hospital. “Medical supplies, people, whatever.”
The mayor said the city also needed large tents.
“Many buildings collapsed and we have a large number of people in the streets with no place to stay,” Karaaslan said.
The temblor also was felt in the nearby provinces of Erzincan, Tunceli, Bingol, Erzurum, Kayseri and Sivas.
More than 50 aftershocks struck the area, including one with a magnitude 5.
Gulay Barbarasoglu, head of the Istanbul observatory, said the quake lasted 17 seconds.
The earthquake damaged power and telephone lines in the area and cut off electricity.
Earthquakes are frequent in Turkey, which lies on the active North Anatolian fault. A 1971 quake in Bingol killed 900 people. Ruptures in the fault caused two quakes in August 1999 that killed 18,000 people and devastated large parts of northwestern Turkey.
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God bless,
Kindgo
Inside the will of God there is no failure. Outside the will of God there is no success.
Posts: 4320 | From: Sunny Florida | Registered: Jun 2002
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