News & Reviews

Tragic earthquake devastates Turkey An enduring 45-second legacy The main event lasted 45 seconds, but it left a long-enduring legacy of heartbreak and destruction throughout Turkey's most populous cities. At 3 a.m. on Aug. 17, an earthquake as powerful as the quake that destroyed San Francisco in 1906 rumbled beneath the industrial heart of Turkey. Two days later, the death toll had topped 7,000. More than 33,000 were reported injured, and thousands were still missing as the window of opportunity for rescue, by week's end, began to close. "The loss is huge," said Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit. "It is the biggest natural disaster I have witnessed.... May Allah help our state and our people." Hardest hit were coastal cities along the Sea of Marmara, particularly Izmit, a heavily industrial city of half a million. One in two casualties were reported from Izmit, and storage tanks at the country's largest oil refinery there caught fire. The blaze burned out of control for three days, threatening one-third of Turkey's fuel supply and forcing evacuations from much of the city, even as thousands of quake victims remained trapped beneath rubble. Firefighters were unable to pump seawater because electricity was out. International teams, including U.S. military forces based at Incirlik, dropped special chemical foam to try to control the blaze. Authorities feared the inferno could spill over to a nearby fertilizer plant with 8,000 tons of ignitable ammonia. Seventy miles northwest of the epicenter, in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, dozens of newly constructed residential buildings collapsed. Death tolls were blamed on shoddy construction, as builders have raced to keep up with growth in Istanbul's western suburbs, where the population has doubled in less than 10 years. International rescue teams-including specialists from Israel and the United States that have honed their rubble-rousing skills in recent bomb wreckages in Kenya, Oklahoma City, and the Middle East-were quickly on the scene. But the widespread nature of the damage made coordinated efforts difficult. The U.S. Sixth Fleet dispatched three U.S. Navy ships carrying 2,100 Marines and 1,000 sailors, along with eight doctors, to quake areas. The U.S. Navy said it would support multiple medical evacuations, as well as fly in supplies. The philanthropy had at least one part self-interest. In recent years, Western nations have developed an increasing stake in the heavily industrialized-and, in many cases, newly privatized-area where the earthquake hit. At Izmit, work was shut down on the world's largest privately financed water-treatment project, a joint venture with British-based Thames Waterworks, and many workers were feared dead. The massive project, a 1,500-foot-long dam and three-mile waterway, is near completion and fully quakeproof, according to the company. A Pirelli tire factory at Izmit collapsed, and car manufacturers Honda, Toyota, and Hyundai reported some damage but no major casualties at plants in the region. Most of Turkey lies on an earthquake belt known as the Anatolia fault. Most recently, a 1995 quake in central Turkey at Dinar killed 95 people and injured thousands. Worst, a quake in 1939 in Erzincan killed an estimated 33,000 people. Yugoslavia, bosnia A messy peace For pro-democracy forces in Yugoslavia, the time for compromise is passed. On the eve of a downtown Belgrade rally against him, President Slobodan Milosevic announced he would hold early elections next year, rather than in 2001. Too little, too late. Former deputy Prime Minister Vuk Draskovic, speaking for the opposition, said the groups want Mr. Milosevic's resignation, an immediate transitional government, and internationally monitored elections. Monitoring of the peace in Bosnia has not been as good a deal as advertised. Muslim, Serb, and Croat leaders who supervise the partition of Bosnia have stolen as much as a billion dollars in public funds, according to a report commissioned by the UN agency set up to oversee the Bosnian peace agreement. The No-Comment Zone