• last year
One year on from the devastating earthquakes in Turkey, i's Molly Blackall visits the worst hit areas.
Transcript
00:00 She kept getting in touch with me by phone from 4am until 9am.
00:05 And lastly she told me that I can't feel anything and I can't do anything.
00:09 And then she died.
00:11 I'm Molly Blackall, Eye's global affairs correspondent,
00:15 here in southern Turkey, close to the border with Syria,
00:19 to report on the aftermath of the deadly earthquake which struck the two countries a year ago.
00:25 I travelled to the city of Antakya, which was the worst affected area by last year's earthquakes.
00:31 Everywhere you look, you can see earthquake damage.
00:35 Hundreds of thousands of buildings across Turkey and Syria crumbled,
00:40 including schools, hospitals and homes.
00:43 Bridges collapsed. Roads and airport tarmacs cracked.
00:50 This is the remnants of a shopping area in central Antakya, which was one of the cities worst affected by the earthquake.
00:58 And if you come through, you can see that the skeleton of the building is still standing, but nothing else is.
01:05 There's still broken glass on the floor, there's still rubble.
01:13 This used to house a lawyer's office and some other shops, we think.
01:17 But this, a year on, is still all that's left.
01:21 In total, more than 50,000 people died.
01:26 One of them was Rima, a close friend of 35-year-old Shireen Al-Ibrahim.
01:32 A year on, she tells me about her harrowing experience that day.
01:37 Rima's house collapsed, trapping her under the rubble.
01:41 She repeatedly called Shireen for help, but it came too late.
01:46 I know a lady who is Syrian, not Turkish, and five days before the earthquake she graduated.
01:53 But she didn't die during the earthquake.
01:57 She kept getting in touch with me by phone from 4am until 9am.
02:02 And lastly, she told me that I can't feel anything and I can't do anything, and then she died.
02:08 Today, thousands of people who lost their homes in the earthquake are living in shipping containers,
02:14 which have been organised into small cities.
02:17 Inside them, aid workers offer a programme of support, from psychological assistance to parenting classes.
02:24 These projects are supported by you, with the British public raising more than £150 million
02:30 for the earthquake response via the Disaster Emergency Committee.
02:37 When I first came here in November, there were 573 containers, but now it's almost 600.
02:47 I don't know the exact number, but in each container there are 6-7 people living.
02:54 And in some containers I know that there are even 13-15 people,
02:59 so probably around 3-4 thousand people are living in this camp.
03:04 The damage is really unimaginable, and the number of dead people that they give,
03:11 it's so much higher than the actual number.
03:14 There are still so many bodies that they couldn't reach, so I wouldn't trust the numbers.
03:20 It's so much more than that.
03:22 And the damage, as you can see from the environment, it's been a year but nothing has changed.
03:29 Those living in the camps don't know how long it will take for them to be moved into a permanent home.
03:35 There's some suggestions that they could be staying in the containers for up to five years.
03:40 And while rebuilding efforts are underway, it's clear that the damage here,
03:45 both physical and psychological, will take many years to recover from.

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