Heavy toll in Turkish ’quake

Press, 31 October 1983, Page 4

Heavy toll in Turkish ’quake

NZPA-Reuter Ankara A huge earthquake killed at least 477 people yesterday in north-east Turkey near the city of Erzurum, the semi-official Anatolian news agency reported as rescue work continued. In a dispatch from Erzurum almost seven hours after the tremor struck, the agency said that 258 bodies had been recovered in the district of Narman, 116 in Horasan district and 11 in Pasinler district, in an area about 50km from the city. A further 92 bodies were pulled from wrecked buildings in the district of Sarikamis in the neighbouring province of Kars, the

agency said. A spokesman for the Kandilli observatory in Istanbul told Reuters that the ’quake measured more than six on the open-ended Richter scale. It struck just after 7 a.m. (2 p.m. N.Z. time). It was one of the strongest in the tremor-prone region for several years. Officials said that firstaid and Army rescue teams had rushed to stricken villages. In some cases the teams had been held up by roads blocked by landslides caused by the earthquake.

The region, bordering the Soviet Union, is mountainous and one of the poorest and most remote in

Turkey. Most of the local population live in small villages of single-storey, mudbuilt houses, few of which have electricity and plumbing.

The worst-hit areas seemed to be the districts of Horasan, Pasinler, and Narman, which form a triangle about 50km north-east of Erzurum. The semi-official Anatolian News Agency said that 700 tents and 700 blankets had been sent from depots in Erzurum to damaged villages. It said that snow was falling in the region where temperatures have already fallen below zero with the approach of winter.