Rescue workers are making a final push to find survivors of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria that rendered many communities unrecognisable to their inhabitants and led the Turkish president to declare it “the disaster of the century”.
The death toll from the quake has now topped 20,000. The earthquake affected an area that is home to 13.5 million people in Turkey and an unknown number in Syria and stretches further than the distance from London to Paris or Boston to Philadelphia.
Even with an army of people taking part in the rescue effort, crews had to pick and choose where to help. The scene from the air showed the scope of devastation, with entire neighbourhoods of high-rise buildings reduced to twisted metal, pulverised concrete and exposed wires.
