Turkey Goes After Builders Over Poor Construction
(Bloomberg) – Turkey began issuing arrest warrants for developers who erected some buildings that collapsed in two massive earthquakes that struck the southeastern region nearly a week ago.
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The death toll in Turkey and neighboring Syria was nearing 30,000. Search and rescue operations are still ongoing. Turkish and Romanian teams pull a 35-year-old man out of the rubble in Hatay province 149 hours after the quake struck.
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(All times Istanbul, GMT+3)
Survivors of Miracle in Hatay, Gaziantep (8:54 am)
A team of Romanian and Turkish troops rescued a 35-year-old man from the rubble of a collapsed building 149 hours after the tremors. In Gaziantep, a child was pulled from the rubble 146 hours after the quake, according to the state-run Anadolu News Agency.
Turkey Prosecuting Builders, Others for Substandard Construction (1:10am)
Turkey’s Vice President Fuat Oktay said 113 arrest warrants had been issued for suspects in investigations into those responsible for poor construction work in the earthquake area.
On Friday, the Turkish Bar Association filed criminal charges against builders, auditors and administrators responsible for such buildings, saying their negligence amounts to manslaughter.
Death toll rises above 29,000 (1:12 a.m.)
The death toll in Turkey from the two tremors rose to over 24,600, Anadolu News Agency quoted Vice President Oktay as saying. In Syria, the death toll is 5,189, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which uses a network of activists on the ground.
According to the government, thousands of people are still missing in Turkey, around 80,000 injured and more than 6,400 buildings destroyed. The death toll has now far surpassed that of the 1999 earthquake near Istanbul, when about 18,000 people died, according to official figures.
Austria resumes rescue operations hours after stopping (7:57 p.m.)
Austrian troops have resumed rescue operations after receiving security guarantees, Michael Bauer, a spokesman for the Austrian army, said on Twitter. Austria had previously cited “an increasingly difficult security situation” in southern Hatay province for the suspension of the deployment of the Austrian Armed Forces’ Disaster Relief Unit. Two German rescue groups also halted rescue operations for safety guarantees.
BTC Oil Loading In Ceyhan May Begin In 2 Days, Reuters Says (7:34 p.m.)
Turkey’s Ceyhan port could start loading oil again from the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in a day or two, Reuters reported, citing a Turkish official and a person involved in the shipping without identifying them.
UN official expects death toll to double (3:23 p.m.)
UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths predicts the death toll will “double or more,” he said in an interview with Sky.
He described the scene as “a tangle of horrifying rubble that hides those we fear to find and makes it dangerous for these heroic people who do this 24/7 to get to them.”
Turkish universities to go online by summer (2:50 p.m.)
Turkish universities will move classes online by the summer to free up housing for survivors, President Erdogan said.
All dormitories on the university campus will be used to accommodate people affected by the earthquakes, Erdogan said.
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