Turkey: Quake kills at least 8, hotel toppled

[November 10, 2011]  VAN, Turkey (AP) -- Rescue workers with pickaxes and earth-movers searched on Thursday for survivors of an earthquake that leveled a downtown hotel in the same Turkish province that was hit by a deadly temblor last month. At least eight people, including a Japanese aid worker, were killed in the new quake.

Some 26 people were rescued in overnight digging in the provincial capital of Van in eastern Turkey. Some of those trapped in the rubble were foreign aid workers and Turkish journalists working in the aftermath of the powerful quake on Oct. 23 that killed about 600 people.

The Bayram Hotel survived that magnitude-7.2 quake with some cracks and a damaged elevator. But it toppled in Wednesday's magnitude-5.7 quake, trapping an undetermined number of people under tons of concrete and twisted metal in a grim replay of the earlier destruction.

The quake knocked down 25 buildings in Van, but only two buildings, both hotels, were occupied because others were evacuated after the first quake, Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said.

"We focused on these two wreckage sites and are working with all our force," to find survivors, he said.

Earlier, Atalay had said three buildings were occupied. He said some houses were damaged in nearby villages, but there were no casualties.

Turkey's Anatolia agency said Atsushi Miyazaki, of the Association for Aid and Relief, Japan, died in a hospital after he was dug out from the rubble of the Bayram Hotel on Thursday. Rescue workers performed CPR on Miyazaki for about 15 minutes before taking him to the hospital in serious condition.

His 32-year-old female colleague, Miyuki Konnai, was rescued alive from the wreckage of the same hotel late Wednesday.

Ikuko Natori, overseas operations manager of the AAR Japan, said Konnai was in stable condition.

"We spoke with her briefly, she is in a hospital at the moment," Natori told The Associated Press by telephone from Tokyo. "She had a slight injury, but it is not life threatening."

Rescuers pulled at least two more people from the same wreckage earlier Thursday.

Two reporters from Turkey's Dogan news agency, Sebahattin Yilmaz and Cem Emir, were still believed to be trapped in the hotel debris.

"The quake happened as our colleagues were trying to file their stories in the hotel's lobby," Dogan said.

Recep Salci, a member of the search and rescue group Akut, said sniffer dogs had indicated that more survivors might be under the rubble.

Some trapped journalists had sent text messages to colleagues asking to be rescued, Ozgur Gunes, a cameraman for Turkey's Cihan news agency, told Haber Turk television on Wednesday.

He had left the hotel before the quake, but rushed back to collect his camera after it struck, only to find that the building toppled.

"There was dust everywhere and the hotel was flattened," he said. He told Sky Turk television that the building had some small cracks before the quake, but that he and other guests were told that there was no structural damage.

Atalay, the deputy prime minister, said authorities had not been able to conduct a full inspection of the buildings for damage after the quake last month.

For the second time in a month, the government dispatched hundreds of rescue workers to the area. It was already trying to cope with the misery of thousands of homeless following the October temblor that destroyed at least 2,000 buildings in Van and in the worst-hit town of Ercis.

The exact number of people at the Bayram Hotel was not known. CNN-Turk television said a number of people were also said to be waiting at an office of an inter-city bus firm under the hotel when the quake hit, while some others were seen at an adjacent pastry shop.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake measured 5.7 and that its epicenter was 16 kilometers (9 miles) south of Van. It struck at 9:23 p.m. (1923 GMT, 2:23 p.m. EST) on Wednesday.

About 1,400 aftershocks have rocked the region since the massive earthquake on Oct. 23. Many residents had been living in tents, despite the cold, too afraid to return to their homes.

Dogan Kalafat, a senior official from the Istanbul-based Kandilli observatory, warned that more tremors could follow in the region, which is crisscrossed with many fault lines.

[Associated Press; By BERTAN AYDUK and MEHMET GUZEL]

Associated Press writers Selcan Hacaoglu and Suzan Fraser in Ankara contributed.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.