Rescue workers on Tuesday continued to search for 34 people missing following severe floods that ravaged parts of Turkey’s Black Sea coast last week, as excavators cleared the sludge and wreckage.
At least 77 people were killed after torrential rains battered the country’s northwestern Black Sea provinces on Aug. 11, causing floods that demolished homes and bridges, swept away cars and blocked access to numerous roads.
The Turkish disaster management agency, AFAD, said 26 people were still unaccounted for in Kastamonu province and eight others were reported missing in Sinop province.
Private NTV television showed excavators removing debris from flood-devastated areas of the town of Bozkurt, in Kastamonu, and from Ayancik, in Sinop. The military installed temporary bridges to replace those destroyed, while helicopters continued to carry aid to villages whose roads remained blocked, the station reported.
More than 9,500 personnel and 19 rescue dogs were involved in the rescue efforts as well as efforts to provide to assistance, AFAD said.
About 2,400 people were evacuated across the region amid the floods — scores of them lifted to safety by helicopters. Many are being temporarily housed in student dormitories.
The floods hit Turkey’s Black Sea coast just as in the south of the country crews were taming wildfires that raced across the country’s Mediterranean coast.
Climate scientists say there’s little doubt that climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving more extreme events — such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and storms — as the planet warms.
