Turkish justice officials targeted more than 130 people allegedly involved in shoddy and illegal construction methods as rescuers extricated more survivors, including a pregnant woman and two small children, six days after a pair of earthquakes collapsed thousands of buildings.
By JUSTIN SPIKE and ZEYNEP BILGINSOY (Associated Press)
ANTAKYA, Turkey Turkish justice officials targeted more than 130 people allegedly involved in shoddy and illegal construction methods as rescuers extricated more survivors, including a pregnant woman and two small children, six days after a pair of earthquakes collapsed thousands of buildings.
The death toll from the 7.8 magnitude and 7.5 magnitude quakes that hit southeastern Turkey and northern Syria nine hours apart on Feb. 6 rose to 33,179 on Sunday and was certain to keep increasing as search teams locate more bodies in the rubble.
As despair bred rage at the agonizingly slow rescue efforts, the focus turned to assigning blame for the disaster in an earthquake-prone region that includes an area of Syria already suffering from years of civil war.
Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said Sunday that some 131 people were under investigation for their alleged responsibility in the construction of buildings that failed to withstand the quakes. While the quakes were powerful, victims, experts and people across Turkey are blaming faulty construction for multiplying the devastation.
Turkey’s construction codes meet current earthquake-engineering standards, at least on paper, but they are too rarely enforced, explaining why thousands of buildings toppled over or pancaked down onto the people inside.
Among those facing scrutiny were two more people who were arrested in Gaziantep province on suspicion of having cut down columns to make extra room in a building that collapsed in the quakes, the state-run Anadolu Agency said.
The justice ministry said three people in all were under arrest pending trial, seven were detained and another seven were barred from leaving Turkey.
Authorities at Istanbul Airport on Sunday detained two contractors held responsible for the destruction of several buildings in Adiyaman, the private DHA news agency and other media reported. The pair were reportedly on their way to Georgia.
One of the detained contractors, Yavuz Karakus, told reporters: “My conscience is clear. I built 44 buildings. Four of them were demolished. I did everything according to the rules,” DHA quoted him as saying.
Rescuers, including crews from other countries, continued to probe the rubble in hope of finding additional survivors who could yet beat the increasingly long odds. Thermal cameras were used to probe the piles of concrete and metal, while rescuers demanded silence so that they could hear the voices of the trapped.
A pregnant woman was rescued Sunday in the hard-hit Turkish province of Hatay, 157 hours after the first quake, state-broadcaster TRT said.
HaberTurk television broadcast the live rescue of a 6-year-old boy removed from the debris of his home in Adiyaman.
