Over 15 Lakh Homeless by Turkey Quakes; 5 lakh New Houses Needed

As per an estimate by the UN Development Program (UNDP) authorities, more than 1.5 million people in Turkey have lost their houses in the recent earthquakes. There is an immediate need to build up at least 500,000 houses to accommodate them in Turkey.

On Tuesday, Louisa Vinton, the UNDP’s Turkey resident representative, in an online press briefing said, the Turkey government had inspected around 70 per cent of the buildings affected by the quakes. Out of them, 412,000 housing units in 118,000 buildings have totally collapsed or are to be demolished completely.

According to her enormous amount of rubble was to be cleared up. UNDP wanted to minimize the threat of hazardous waste.

According to Vinton, this can be termed the largest natural disaster in Turkey’s history. She said, the search and rescue phase for the first quakes on Sunday was over, and the last survivor was pulled from the rubble almost 300 hours after the quake.

Catherine Smallwood, senior emergency officer for the WHO, told media on Tuesday that checking risks of communicable diseases is now vital as several displaced people live in close quarters, with poor access to toilets and clean water. According to her, the risk of respiratory illnesses, cholera, hepatitis A, and measles has increased.

In recent weeks, Turkey’s southern Kahramanmaras province has been rattled by a series of earthquakes ranging from magnitude 6.4 to 7.7.

The quakes also hit parts of Syria. In total, an estimated 47,000 people have lost their lives in the two countries, according to media reports.