At least 62 people died in the floods and floods that swept through the mountainous northern provinces of Turkey last Wednesday, but the search for the missing continues, Turkish emergency service Afad reports this Sunday (15.08.2021).
Added to this are more than 70 missing people, as Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu reported to the Turkish Anadolu agency during a visit to the town of Bozkurt in Kastamonu province. , on the Black Sea coast, some 400 kilometers east of Istanbul.
“We have received a total of 77 missing persons notices, 62 in Kastamonu province and 15 in Sinop. This does not mean that all these people are missing, they are notices and we are investigating them,” Soylu said. .
Emergency teams across the region continued to search for the missing among the many partially collapsed buildings.
Massive damage to Bozkurt
Kastamonu is the most affected province, with 52 victims, most of them in Bozkurt, a town of just over 5,000 people, devastated on Wednesday afternoon by a heavy flood, which invaded a residential area just a minute from ‘Ezine Creek.
Drone footage taken by Reuters showed massive damage in the town of Bozkurt, with rescue workers operating among collapsed or damaged buildings and dozens of cars and debris of all kinds swept away by torrents.
evacuation operations
In the western adjoining province of Bartin, an elderly woman died, while at least 9 people died in Sinop, located east of Kastamonu, where rescue efforts are still continuing for isolated people by the floods that destroyed roads and bridges.
In total, nearly 2,500 people were evacuated by Afad teams, including some 1,500 in Kastamonu, according to this public body, which is now concentrating its efforts on Sinop, where it has 20 helicopters deployed.
Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar announced on Sunday that the navy is sending two ships to Sinop to help evacuate citizens still stranded in the Black Sea coastal province.
Many citizens blame the disaster on the government for allowing the construction of residential areas in the riverbeds of these mountainous regions and for the proliferation of hydroelectric power stations which multiply the effect of flooding.
Soylu, however, countered that hydroelectric plants in the region are fed by pipelines, not by dams that could collapse.
jc (efe, Reuters, ap)
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Author: Martin Kuebler
