FATE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT

Tens Of Thousands Still Under Rubble As Death Toll Of Turkey-Syria Earthquakes Climb

SERGE JORDAN, ISA

The scenes of the aftermath of the 7.8 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes that struck wide swaths of Turkey, Syria, and Kurdistan in the early morning of Monday, February 6, were harrowing. If that weren’t enough, after two weeks of thousands of aftershocks, another 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck again on February 20.

At the time of writing, the death toll has surpassed 46,000, and tens of thousands are still unaccounted for, trapped under the rubble as the Turkish government officially ends its rescue operation. As the areas affected in Syria are mostly war zones split between factions, the official death toll on the Syrian side is unreliably approximate.

Tens of thousands of people have been injured, and millions left without homes trying to survive in subzero winter temperatures, often with no access to electricity, gas, clean water, or food. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that as many as 23 million people have been directly impacted by the earthquakes.

Mixed with grief and despair, rage is mounting at the authorities on both sides of the border for their responsibility for, and appalling response to, the disaster. “Everyone is getting angrier by the minute,” said a man from Sarmada, a town in Syria’s Idlib province, as people have been left to fend for themselves. In most areas of Turkey, no rescue team arrived during the first critical 24 hours after the quakes. Protests by earthquake victims have since been reported in some badly-affected localities, like in Adıyaman and in Ordu.

Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has blamed the delays on the damaged roads and airports; but that serves only to hide his regime’s own culpability in this situation. Hatay Airport, whose runway has been split into two and made unusable by the earthquakes, was built on the Amik Plain, a tectonically active area, despite repeated warnings from environmental activists and protests by local residents.

After a massive earthquake struck northwestern Turkey in 1999, an “earthquake tax” was introduced, supposedly to develop disaster prevention and emergency services and avoid similar tragedies in the future. But no one fully knows where that money went and, notwithstanding the tireless efforts of rescue workers, it is obvious that the state itself was awfully unprepared despite the region being a prime candidate for seismic events of that type. To add insult to injury, volunteering individuals, civil society organizations, aid groups, and assistance from oppositionrun cities were also prevented from getting involved in the rescue efforts because of bureaucratic hurdles imposed on them by AKP government officials.

Corporate Profiteering At The Heart Of The Problem

Erdogan has blamed “fate’s plan” for the scale of the disaster. Although Monday’s earthquakes were the most powerful in the region since 1939, the scale of human and material destruction has nothing to do with fate, nor is it natural.

“In the study of geohazards we have a saying, which is that earthquakes don’t really kill people – buildings do,” said Carmia Schoeman, master’s degree holder in landslide geology, and member of WASP (ISA in South Africa). She explains, “For many decades, the science and technology has existed to not only predict the areas that would be worst hit by such events, but also how to minimize the damage caused through earthquake-proof construction of buildings.”

After the 1999 disaster, Turkey introduced new building regulations for earthquake zones. But these regulations were at best very lightly enforced, at worst ignored entirely, while older buildings were not retrofitted to match the new standards. A regime-backed building boom saw the proliferation of large residential projects that were often delivered with sub-par material and without proper quality control, so as to maximize financial returns for a few top real estate companies with tight bonds to the ruling party. This building spree, facilitated by huge state support and greased by large-scale corruption to circumvent the rules, became a cash cow for these regimeallied businesses. The construction and renovation of many public buildings like hospitals, schools, post offices, and administrative buildings were also subcontracted via state tenders under the AKP government. While such buildings should have provided safety to the public in case of disaster, they were among the first to collapse —including the headquarters of Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD) in Hatay. opposition-held areas hit by the earthquakes barely a few hours after the disaster.

Twelve years of war in Syria, fueled by Assad’s regime as well as multi-sided imperialist interventions, had already left the country’s infrastructure and people’s housing conditions in tatters. Nearly one-third of the homes in Aleppo and Idlib had already been damaged or destroyed by the war, 70% of the population was in need of aid, and 2.9 million were at risk of starvation across the country even before the earthquakes made a horrific situation compellingly worse. Millions of Syrians have been displaced multiple times by the war and now, many more will be displaced by this disaster.

Almost immediately after the earthquakes hit, several Western governments mobilized aid and rescue teams to Turkey, but they offered very little or nothing to Syria. Victims of the earthquakes are paying the price of the ongoing power struggle between Western imperialism and the Syrian dictatorship; both are playing with people’s lives to boost their power and prestige. U.S.-imposed economic sanctions impede the shipment of aid to the affected zones, whereas the regime itself is withholding aid to rebel-controlled areas. Systemic corruption and price-gouging across the board are corroding further the chances of meaningful humanitarian assistance.

Cascading Disaster

A new layer of disaster will now predictably add on to the immediate effects of the earthquakes. People who haven’t died from being stuck under the rubble are threatened by the cold, hunger, and the potential spread of diseases. As illustrated by a dam collapse in Syria’s Idlib province on February 9, further accidents are bound to develop out of the current situation.

“As it always happens in this type of mega-disasters, big corporations are also rubbing their hands in greed while contemplating the opportunities to profit from people’s misery and death.”

This tragedy epitomizes the utterly dysfunctional and barbaric nature of capitalism. As it always happens in this type of mega-disasters, big corporations are also rubbing their hands in greed while contemplating the opportunities to profit from people’s misery and death –from cement companies seeing their shares jump on the stock exchange just after the earthquakes, to some Western banks overcharging customers to transfer money to Turkey.

Syria: Earthquake Effects Amplified By War

But the callousness and cynicism of the ruling classes doesn’t stop here. On February 7, Turkish armed forces bombed homes in the Kurdish majority and earthquake-affected district of Tel Rifaat in Northern Syria, before people could even remove the debris from the quakes. The Syrian army also bombed

In contrast though, volunteers everywhere have rushed to help extract people from the rubble, donate blood, or collect basic necessities to assist survivors. This instinctive solidarity from working-class people provides the seeds out of which, beyond the urgent assistance required to save lives, a movement could grow to demand justice for the numerous and largely preventable victims of this disaster. But this movement could also fight for a new society, one that puts people’s lives and safety at its core instead of profit accumulation for a tiny few, to make sure that such horrors never happen again. J

RANSON THOMAS, GAINESVILLE

Ranson Thomas is an RN, MSN in nursing education.

Fentanyl has been in use by physicians for the treatment of pain since the 1960s, but over the last few years news stories related to fentanyl have been everywhere. From contributing to record numbers of overdose deaths, to a number of police officers having what appear to be near-fatal episodes following contact with the drug, there’s a lot of fear and paranoia regarding fentanyl and the danger it poses. Is this fear justified, and what’s behind the sudden explosion in the illicit use of fentanyl?

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid analgesic frequently prescribed to patients by physicians to treat pain, and it’s typically administered via oral tablets, patches, or injections. Fentanyl is a powerful pain reliever, used for the long term management of chronic pain, post-surgical pain, labor pain in pregnant women, and management of cancer pain. While it’s sensationalized as “50-100 times stronger than morphine,” fentanyl is prescribed in much smaller doses.

Perhaps the most sensational examples of the harm fentanyl can cause are the stories of police officers nearly dying from fentanyl exposure. These stories have generated millions of reactions on social media since as early as 2015, but more viral instances continue to show up, like that posted by a San Diego sheriff in 2021. In truth, police officers face no harm at all from direct contact with fentanyl. Physicians, nurses, and other healthcare providers come into the same kind of contact with fentanyl on a daily basis without adverse reactions.

“It’s extremely unlikely that law enforcement officials or other first responders will experience an overdose after brief, unintentional exposure while caring for individuals who used opioids,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a physician and medical analyst for CNN. Wen explained that opioids are not absorbed well through the skin except through prolonged contact, and are not aerosolized outside extreme circumstances, meaning it’s not possible to quickly overdose from breathing it. To date, there has not been a single confirmed case of a police officer having a fentanyl overdose from accidental exposure.