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It was not just one earthquake, we had mutiple earthquakes.
A 7.8 at 4.17 am, and an independent one about 9 hours later, registering 7.4 on the scale.
6.4 several days later, followed by 27 more major quakes in less than an hour.
Fault lines went berserk.
Too many innocent people died...
I jumped in a car and drove about 1000 km to the disaster area as soon as I could gather myself and spent about 20 days there as part of the relief effort.
Please give me a couple days to post the whole story with pics.
It was worse than post WW'2 pics of Berlin. I mean, some of the bombs missed the buildings then.
Seeing entirely leveled towns left me speechless.
We built a container park to provide housing for survivors, set up solar charging stations for phones, hand delivered about 225 water tanks (half a ton to five tons) to tent cities and survivor enclaves, and assisted people and whatever organizations sprouted there in any way we could.
I got very sick and had to drive back home about 2 days ago.
A very sad one indeed. A couple of good friends flew over with rescue teams to help, so I heard some first hand stories too. This will take time to heal, thoughts and prayers with all of the affected people. Stay safe and get well soon!
I am sorry for not documenting the devastation the quakes caused.
It was just really hard for me to photograph private lives of people who had either passed, or were trying to survive the ordeal.
Here are a few shots I managed to illustrate how the low quality concrete just crumbled to bits...
This Mitsubishi L200 Crawler was our home at the disaster zone. I covered over 2000 miles behind the wheel, and we slept in it the whole time.
We found an undamaged hotel (save a few non-structural cracks) away from the heavily damaged areas and parked it there every night for security reasons. We only entered the hotel for quick bathroom trips. I showered twice in 18 days. NOT proud of that.
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Spent the first day and a half providing support to search and rescue teams. Anything from rope to hard hats, to gloves, goggles, masks, medical supplies... That allowed us to scope the area while making ourselves useful.
We are not trained in search and rescue. No point in getting involved in that.
That is why we quickly decided to focus on providing shelter for surviving families.
We found a vacant lot in the middle of a ruined neighborhood and focused on bringing containers and tents to set up temporary housing.
Containers arrived at record time on semi trucks. They were clocked at 100+ mph rushing to the disaster areas.
I swear it took me less than 10 minutes to find and secure this huge crane. A very prominent businessman had his entire construction force building a container town not too far away, I just drove there and told them what we were doing. Did not have to repeat myself. They just asked me to show the way.
Sanitation was the next issue. Quickly ordered 100 water tanks, and received them in record time, too. We got in a second batch of 125 more tanks later.
Installing ball valves...
I talked to the fire department chief about the tanks. I would send him tank locations over whatsapp, and he would send fire trucks to fill them up.
The plan worked flawlessly. They refilled the tanks often, which was great.
There was no power...
We got a hold of solar charging stations and set them up in tent cities everywhere...
We also secured a fairly large warehouse and used it as an order fulfillment center to dispatch supplies to families with special needs.
Volunteers picked up and delivered the "orders".
Sorry, I don't have pics of the stocked warehouse in full swing. We were really too busy.
Set up a field kitchen for our container community (as well as several others in mountain villages), eventually brought in power there (stole power from light poles when they eventually came on), installed bathrooms and converted a couple to shower rooms, found people to to the plumbing, and even found a social services truck to show cartoons for the kids....
The water tanks proved to be incredibly useful...
Setting up showers at temporary army barracks:
I am the project development director at IDEA Universal, a non-profit NGO focusing on the underprivileged parts of the planet.
We normally carry out micro development projects in Africa. We build smart villages, and work on sustainable water projects there. Such a disaster at home meant diverting our know how to the heartland.
I have hundreds of pictures, a pretty undeniable case of PTSD, and overlapping memories of the suffering millions of innocent people had to endure in Eastern Turkey.
I went there with a trusted friend just to be useful, and we were both amazed at how much we could accomplish in the course of 18 days.
We both got very sick in the end and the drive back to Istanbul was absolutely miserable.
I am home, trying to recover, but I just wanted to share some of what went on over there.
Talking about lack of, or delayed, or paralyzed government services in the disaster areas is not a good idea. I prefer to remain un-detained.
I just got back from spending three weeks performing heroic acts of civil engineering and logistical organization in the face of one of the worst natural disasters in living memory, at great personal cost
I'm really sorry that I don't have better photos. I'm a bit tired.
Dude.
Just... dude.
We were worried initially when you dropped offline, until we realized that Istanbul was outside of the affected area. At that point, it was obvious that you had probably raced out to the disaster with men and equipment to go save people's lives by providing water, food and shelter.
Because that's the sort of man you are.
Those photos of the structural failures are just mind-blowing. They make me reflect a great deal upon what we in the US sometimes bemoan as the regulatory hassles concerning engineering, blueprint review, materials certification, and inspection of construction works.
And your comments made me think of the first time I visited Papenburg, Germany for work. It's a port city, known for shipbuilding. My very first observation was how the whole place seemed so strangely modern and new. Not a single building older than the 1950s.
03-03-2023, 02:47 PM
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