By Eric Appah Marfo
Accra, Feb. 07, GNA — Ghanaians living in areas affected by the earthquake in Turkey will be evacuated in the coming days, Mrs Francisca Ashietey-Odunton, Ghana’s Ambassador to Turkey, has said.
“Our compatriots in the disaster areas are mostly students and not many. They’ve all been accounted for and we will evacuate them in the coming days,” she told Ghana News Agency in an interview on Tuesday.
She said the Embassy was also working with authorities to find out, which hospital Christian Atsu, a Ghanaian footballer, who was trapped in the rubble, had been taken to.
A total of 2,769 teams from 65 countries have so far contacted Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to offer assistance after an earthquake measuring 7.7 on the Richter scale hit the country yesterday.
In all, 30 governors and 47 district governors have been assigned to the disaster areas.
Some 25,693 search and rescue workers, 360 vehicles and 3,361 (with 629 crane) pieces of construction equipment have also been deployed to the affected areas.
The earthquake happened at Pazarcik,Kahramanmaras at 04.17 hours on Monday, February 6, 2023.
A total of 312 earthquakes occurred, including a 7.6-magnitude earthquake that hit Elbistan.
According to initially available information, 3,432 people lost their lives and 21,103 individuals were injured in Kahramanmaras, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Diyarbakir, Adana, Adiyaman, Osmaniye, Hatay, Kilis and Malatya.
According to Turkey’s Ministry of the Interior, the Air and Land Forces, the Gendarmerie and the Coast Guard had planned the deployment of staff members from Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir with 54 aircrafts.
It said a total of 10 ships, (nine by the Naval Forces, and one by the Coast Guard Command), were employed to deliver personnel and materials to the affected areas.
In addition, the TCG skenderun ship was sent to skenderun sdemir Port.
It said 118 Mobile base stations (18 of them were activated) and 1,688 generators (701 of them were activated) and eight vessels for emergency correspondence with 508 staff were deployed to the earthquake zones.
The Ministry said to be able to carry out emergency correspondence with citizens in the disaster zones, GSM operators activated phone lines that were blocked due to unpaid debts.
GNA