Antakya, Turkey, Feb 22 (AFP\/APP):Half a dozen dump trucks offloaded their potentially hazardous cargo of rubble in a cloud of dust by a roadside in Antakya, Turkey, one of the city\u2019s worst hit by a deadly earthquake.<\/p>\n
Two weeks after an earthquake devastated southern Turkey, which on Monday was once again rattled by a quake, experts fear millions of tons of debris will end up dumped in the open.<\/p>\n
Police watched on as the rubble-laden trucks trundled along a winding road leading to the ancient citadel that overlooks the city of 400,000 people which is now almost entirely deserted.<\/p>\n
An excavator and two diggers sat idle, surrounded by dozens of mounds that were once homes and workplaces.<\/p>\n
Similar efforts to remove the ubiquitous rubble that now dominates quake-hit cities are under way in central Iskenderun, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) north of Antakya, AFP correspondents saw.<\/p>\n
In Hatay province, the region worst-hit by the February 6 earthquake, the question of how to handle the debris is increasingly taking centre stage.<\/p>\n
In Antakya, hundreds of excavators filled dump trucks which moved on in single file as operations to find survivors wound down.<\/p>\n
In total, more than 118,000 buildings were destroyed or severely damaged by the earthquake, which killed more than 42,000 people in Turkey, and nearly 46,000 in total including neighbouring Syria.<\/p>\n
Clearance operations look set to intensify as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who will seek re-election in May, has pledged to build 200,000 housing units “from scratch” in the eleven provinces rocked by the quake.<\/p>\n
Displaced people will start to move in within a year, he promised.<\/p>\n
– ‘Harming the environment’ –<\/p>\n
The scale of the task is daunting, but Erdogan has vowed the rubble will be removed and processed “without harming the environment and the people”.<\/p>\n
Last week, authorities had to reassure conservationists after footage emerged showing waste being dumped at a bird sanctuary in Hatay province.<\/p>\n
“We have solved this problem. We will collect this waste… as soon as possible,” Deputy Environment Minister Mehmet Emin Birpinar said on Twitter.<\/p>\n
Koray Dogan Urbarli, a spokesman for Turkey’s Green Party, said the authorities were only interested in getting “rid of the images that will lose votes for the government”.<\/p>\n
One hundred million tons containing “many substances harmful to human health and the ecosystem” must be removed with great care, he said.<\/p>\n
The potentially harmful rubble being moved around the city on a vast fleet of trucks was entirely uncovered, AFP correspondents saw.<\/p>\n
Asbestos, an insulating and carcinogenic substance which was permitted for use in Turkey until 2014, is almost certainly present, experts have said.<\/p>\n
– ‘Uncontrolled manner’ –<\/p>\n
“(It) can contain many different chemicals like lead or microplastics or asbestos,” said Sedat Gundogdu, a plastic pollution specialist at Cukurova University in Adana.<\/p>\n
The researcher estimates that the 200 million tons of rubble created by the earthquake is “seven times the amount of waste generated by Turkey yearly”.<\/p>\n
“We don’t have the capacity to manage that amount of waste,” he said.<\/p>\n
The earthquake-related rubble, first temporarily transported to one site, will then be transferred to a second site and sorted before being buried, he said.<\/p>\n
Authorities must ensure the floors of the dumping pits are not porous or else “they must be covered” with an impermeable layer to prevent contamination of groundwater, said Gundogdu.<\/p>\n
“Moving these materials… in an uncontrolled manner will endanger the soil, water, air, the whole ecosystem, and life as a whole for many years,” environmental campaign group Greenpeace told AFP.<\/p>\n
Urbarli says the rapid removal of rubble may also hinder any investigation into possibly corrupt developers and contractors whose buildings collapsed.<\/p>\n
“All this rubble is evidence!” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Antakya, Turkey, Feb 22 (AFP\/APP):Half a dozen dump trucks offloaded their potentially hazardous cargo of rubble in a cloud of dust by a roadside in Antakya, Turkey, one of the city\u2019s worst hit by a deadly earthquake. Two weeks after an earthquake devastated southern Turkey, […]<\/p>\n
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