“No man is an island …”

 

The terrible news from Turkey and Syria dominate this morning’s front pages (link). Overnight, there was yet another earthquake, of 5.5 strength. It is freezing and raining: the misery is too huge to put into adequate words. Let me therefore quote John Donne:

“No man is an island,Entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, As well as if a promontory were: As well as if a manor of thy friend’s Or of thine own were. Any man’s death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.”

At the time of writing (6.30am) there were over 4,300 people dead and over 5,600 houses were destroyed in Turkey alone, according to the DT (paywalled link). Since politics never sleeps, even in the face of such tragedy, there’s also a reminder of the ongoing strife in Syria. We’ve not heard much about that for some time – the war in another part of the globe saw to that.

Yesterday, some readers noticed that the infamous ‘White Helmets’ had suddenly become visible again, in some of the first videos sent out from that area. Here’s the reason for their appearance:

“In government-held areas of Syria, there were 656 confirmed deaths, with some 1,400 people injured, according to the Health Ministry. In the country’s rebel-held northwest, groups that operate there said at least 450 people died, with many hundreds injured.” (paywalled link)

I don’t know if the news editors of our MSM believe that the question of ‘rebellion’ in Northern Syria is better not mentioned. After all, they’ve not written about this for quite some time. However, the Germans are not so finicky. We’re told (machine translated from German):

“After the severe earthquake in the Turkish-Syrian border area, 20 suspected fighters escaped the terrorist organization Islamic State (IS) during a prison mutiny in Syria. The AFP news agency learned this on Monday evening from Rajo’s military prison near the border with Turkey. After the earthquake, which also affected Rajo, the prisoners started an uprising and brought parts of the prison under their control. Around 20 inmates fled during the mutiny, it continued. “We believe that they are IS fighters.” (link in German, paywalled)

One hopes that in the face of this devastation these ‘IS fighters’ fled in order to help their own families rather than continuing their fight. Meanwhile, The Times has an article which describes the geological reason for the devastation:

“Syria and Turkey mark the place where the Arabian plate in the south pushes up into the Anatolian plate to the north, crunching past the African plate to the west. On a human timescale, the movement is imperceptible — in the shifting jigsaw of the Earth’s plates, the northwards drift of the Arabian plate is pushing the Anatolian one west at 2cm a year. In a geological timescale the forces are vast. […] That small annual shift has equated to 15 metres of movement. But it has not happened uniformly. The plates squeeze and squeeze, pressure building up, until experiencing a sudden release. That release was what we saw today.” (link, paywalled)

While the reports in our MSM are full of harrowing images and heartbreaking stories from people suffering in these regions, there are other questions carefully and quietly being raised, namely about how come that some buildings collapsed while others didn’t, often standing right next to each other. The author of the analysis in The Times is rather careful when he writes:

“As Japan and many seismic regions have shown, it is possible to mitigate the effects of an earthquake with clever building. Theoretically, the same should be true in this region. After a 1999 earthquake in the north of the country killed 17,000 people, many in collapsed buildings, the Turkish government mandated that all new buildings follow modern standards. Whether that has been adhered to in a part of the country that has experienced Kurdish separatists, civil war and the rise and fall of Isis remains to be seen.” (link, paywalled)

The images from that region sadly show that these standards weren’t really adhered to. A German parliamentarian of Turkish origin hinted at this state of affairs when she said (machine translated from German):

“We have a high corruption rate in Turkey in the construction industry,” said [Ms] Güler. “On paper, the building regulations may be earthquake-proof,” but [she] doubted whether this is also the case in practice.”(link, in German, paywalled)

What she didn’t say but what was mentioned in numerous comment posts is that the building industry in Turkey is in the hands of family members of the current President of Turkey. 

Rounding up these reports there are already hints that certain organisations are again trying to get into ‘Teh News’ by providing a touch of fear porn, e.g. “The World Health Organisation said the total could rise eightfold.” (link, paywalled) or warning: “meteorologist Tyler Metcalf suggested on Twitter that the Turkey earthquake could have ‘destabilised faults across the world.” (link).

Even in the face of this tragedy they cannot leave well alone, not even for a day or two. Yes, things can always get worse, even though politicians, always happy to pose, can do nothing about geology, especially not if they haven’t dealt with preventive mitigation by enforcing building regulations and by prosecuting corruption where such regulations are disregarded.

I note that at the moment the Climate Eejits have refrained from blaming ‘Climate Catastrophe’ for these earthquakes. At the moment I still hope, forlornly, that our politicians won’t use this catastrophe as occasion for extreme virtue signalling, by telling the MSM how much aid “we” are sending to Turkey. Such posturing is despicable when actual helpers are trying to rush to these stricken places to do the hard work amidst the rubble and the cold. 

That’s all I have for today. In the face of this tragedy it’s hard to find words which are not trivial or mawkish while at the same time our home-made problems, the strikes and our politicians’ ‘performances’, look puny. I hope today brings better news from this stricken region. Keep safe and count your blessings.



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