The route that leads from Gaziantep to Antakya, which is one of the regions in Turkey that was most hit by the massive earthquake that struck on Monday, is littered with emergency camps for displaced people as well as destroyed structures. The earthquake occurred on Monday.
Even though it was struck by devastation as well, the highway leading to the devastated city is now being used by a steady stream of cars that are making their way there to assist survivors and supply supplies.
The trip to Antakya city takes around two hours and fifty minutes, on average. It takes at least six hours to complete presently.
One of the numerous drivers spoke to The National while standing next to his vehicle, which had come to a halt in the centre of a very long queue. He said, “I left, but I’m going back now to get some food.”
In order to reduce the amount of time spent sitting in traffic, the police in Antakya have begun to pull vehicles over.
“Antakya is on your itinerary as well, right? As a word of caution, he warned that there is nothing remaining of the city.
The scale of the devastation is shocking when seen from the road. In some locations, the earth splits up suddenly like a wound, whereas in other others, wrecked automobiles remain undamaged as if time had stopped.
Hatay was left in ruins.
The earthquake and its aftershocks caused the most damage in Turkey’s Hatay province, notably in Antakya, the seat of the region, where it is estimated that more than one thousand structures have been destroyed.
Survivors in the city, which was home to approximately 400,000 people, said more over half the structures were reduced to rubble.
Along the motorway, the sights give stinging reminders of Monday’s catastrophe ― a mosque with a missing minaret, a home sagging perilously.
Emergency shelters – rows of white tents — and improvised residences along the road, indicate the extent of a calamity that has touched as many as 13 million people throughout the nation,
There are a few smaller settlements in the vicinity of Antakya that have not been severely damaged. However, despite being shut off from resources such as power, water, and food due to the impassability of the road, the people of these areas have still been impacted.
They get the impression that no one is paying attention to them.
Mustafa, a resident of a tiny town located close to Antakya, stated, “We have nothing left, water, food, electricity, everything is missing, and we have scarcely gotten anything, not even a tent.” Mustafa’s community is without water, bread, or power.
A little girl from the same hamlet exclaimed, “The city is done,” while making a motion with her arm that resembled her spreading out a tablecloth. “The city is done,” she remarked.
There is no clear explanation as to why Antakya was destroyed to such a terrible degree by the earthquake. The media has reported other cities having neighbourhoods that were “pulverised,” but none of those places were as severely devastated as Antakya.
When observed from orbit, the extent of the damage is more readily apparent, as shown by satellite photographs showing several tower blocks reduced to rubble.
According to the Turkish daily Cumhuriyet, the real estate developer Servet Altas is to blame for the destruction of several of the buildings. Altas is said to have developed many of the structures that were destroyed.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the President of Turkey, said on Wednesday that there were 21,000 emergency workers working in the province of Hatay. Erdogan made this statement while visiting Kahramanmaras, the epicentre of the earthquake.
Mr. Erdogan said that the damage that occurred in Antakya and Hatay was comparable to that which occurred in Kahramanmaras.
“I was up up and personal with the intensity of the situation [in Kahramanmaras]. And today the image we are seeing in Hatay is not much different from what we saw in the past.”
He continued by saying, “But Antakya is where the damage is.”
Residents who were displaced and relatives who were looking for loved ones beneath the debris have reported that rescue crews have not yet arrived. Some of the relatives have taken to social media to ask for guidance on how to operate the cranes that would be required to raise the wreckage.
As mortuaries neared capacity, bodies were put out in rows in a hospital car park in the city. This was another dreadful milestone in a tragedy that does not seem to be getting better any time soon.
It has been established that the earthquake that occurred on Monday caused more deaths than the 9.1 magnitude quake that occurred in Japan in the spring of 2011, which claimed the lives of over 18,000 people.
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has made a donation to the relief efforts for earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria amounting to millions of dollars.