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Click to read the article in Turkish
We are in an astroturf soccer field complex in Göksu, Maraş. Young and aged people and children are sleeping on the floor on cardboards with blankets in the single-floor administrative part heated by a small furnace. While on the field there are people looking for blankets or clothes they need among the aid materials. Some are asking for drinking water.
There is a small chaos in the district but most people are undemonstrative. Göksun has a population of around 53 thousand people. However, the district is a ghost town now other than the highway traffic.
Some street lights are shining here and there but there is no sign of life in any building, any house. The temperature is around -5 ⁰C during the day and falls down to -18 ⁰C at night.
Göksun is in the middle of Pınarbaşı, Maraş and Elbistan triangle. The traffic is slow in both directions. There are long rows of vehicles. We hear ambulance sirens all the time. The vehicles are giving way to ambulances with the zipper method on the two-lane road.
"We need tents"
We enter the soccer field. We have the opportunity to talk to the owner. "We are trying to do what we can here, for four days now," he says. He tells us that the aid started to arrive two days after the quake.
"Now there are enough of for instance blankets, quilts, pillows. There is water, dry food, and bread. But for instance, no olives or cheese ever arrived. We also have difficulty finding nappies and children's clothes. Again we are having a great problem with tents. Some tents reached here but not enough at all. One trailer truck of tents arrived and they distributed two tents to each neighborhood. But of course, two are not enough. 3-5 thousand people live in these neighborhoods. 12-13 people can stay in these tents.
Video: Hikmet Adal, Editing: Ferid Demirel
Two families in a car
We also talk to a woman trying to find clothes. She is a cardiac patient with a pacemaker. She was to go and make an application for a transplant just on the day of the earthquake.
They stayed in the open for the first two days. Today they are in her son's car.
"Our house did not collapse but we cannot go in. The building next to us collapsed completely. There are cracks in our building. But today we are in my son's car. We are two families there, seven people in one car. There is no fuel in the car either. We cannot do anything, we just sit there. It is freezing cold on the street.
She is a cardiac patient and she should not stay in the cold. She says she only wants a tent and coal. She has been going and asking the gendarme for three days but could not get anything.
Great destruction in villages
We meet an officer of the district governorship. We ask him what the situation is in the villages. He says, "bad."
"I just came back from a village. Almost all houses have collapsed, and people are outside. Even though it is a village, there are those buried under the wreckage. They take them out and bury them immediately." (HA/FD/PE)
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