Hundreds of homeless people huddled around fires and under blankets Monday after a powerful earthquake jolted western Turkey, killing at least 44 people and injuring more than 150.
Civil defense teams with sniffer dogs called off rescue operations late Sunday, nearly 12 hours after the quake struck the agricultural province of Afyon, about 155 miles southwest of the nation’s capital, Ankara.
“We’ve determined there are no survivors under the rubble,” said Afyon Deputy Gov. Halil Ibrahim Turkoglu.
Authorities, under fire for responding too slowly to two major earthquakes in 1999, said they had rushed mobile hospitals, prefabricated homes and blankets to the region and set up makeshift first aid posts to treat the injured.
About 100 buildings collapsed when Sunday’s magnitude 6 quake rocked the area at 9:15 a.m. In Eber, a village of about 1,000 people, 15 people were crushed in houses made of sun-dried mud bricks and wood.
Temperatures dropped below freezing overnight and only a handful of prefabricated houses had been set up.
“What we need most is a warm place,” said a woman crouching underneath plastic sheeting with about 10 others on the back of a truck.
“There’s no hot food and there’s no water,” said Rehan, a 17-year-old girl.
Many in the village grumbled that Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit’s government was slow to send food and to supply shelter. In Sultandagi, snow covered the ground but only a handful of tents had been erected.
Ecevit toured the quake-battered region Sunday, urging people to stay outside damaged homes for safety reasons.
“The state is working with all its strength to minimize the pain and sorrow of our citizens,” he said.
In 1999 two quakes in northwest Turkey killed an estimated 18,000 people.
The rural region has about 1 million residents, many living on farms and in small houses. In Bolvadin, the town nearest the epicenter and about 190 miles east of Istanbul, a random patchwork of collapsed homes and other buildings could be seen in aerial shots from television helicopters.
The top of a minaret had fallen through the roof of a mosque and men were kneeling in the street for afternoon prayers.
In the neighboring province of Konya, one person died of a heart attack and seven people were injured after jumping out of windows and off balconies.
Authorities found a silver lining in the tragedy. “Because today is Sunday and shops are closed, a huge disaster was avoided,” Public Works Minister Abdulkadir Akcan said.
