The search for survivors of the earthquake that toppled thousands of buildings in Turkey and Syria reached a critical stretch on Wednesday, with rescue teams from two dozen countries helping locals sift through the rubble and experts warning that the realistic window to find any in the subfreezing temperatures was quickly closing.
The death toll from the magnitude 7.8 quake that struck Monday neared 12,000, making it the deadliest since a magnitude 9.0 quake off the coast of Japan in March 2011 triggered a tsunami, killing nearly 20,000. Nearly all of Turkey is very seismically active so the country is no stranger to devastating earthquakes — a 7.4 magnitude temblor that struck near Istanbul in 1999 killed an estimated 18,000 people.
