TURKEY QUAKE KILLS AT LEAST 279, HUNDREDS MISSING

DEATH TOLL IN TURKEY QUAKE
RISES TO 279, HUNDREDS MISSING

(Reuters) - Rescuers searched the rubble of collapsed buildings Monday for survivors and victims of a major earthquake that killed at least 279 people and injured more than 1,300 in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.  Rescue and relief efforts focused on the city of Van and the town of Ercis, 100 km to the north, but hundreds were also feared dead in remote villages of mud-brick houses after Sunday’s 7.2 magnitude quake, Turkey’s strongest in a decade.  Desperate survivors cried for help beneath heaps of smashed concrete and twisted metal, some using mobile phones to tell friends they were alive, as earth-moving machines and troops raced against time in Van and Ercis.  The U.N. disaster agency said almost 1,000 buildings had collapsed, many of them poorly built. A Red Crescent spokesman said the agency was preparing to provide refuge for as many as 40,000 people, though it was so far impossible to tell how many would need shelter. 

Thousands of people made homeless by the quake were forced to spend a second night outdoors in the hilly, windswept Van region, enduring near-freezing temperatures. Families huddled round open fires that glowed in the dark. Some stayed in tents put up on soccer pitches, living on handouts from aid agencies.  In Van, cranes shifted rubble from a collapsed six-storey apartment block where 70 people were feared trapped.  The quake brought fresh torment to impoverished southeast Turkey, where PKK militants fighting a decades-long insurgency killed 24 Turkish troops south of Van last week.  The area it struck, near the border with Iran, is remote and mountainous, with long distances between villages and people who live off stock-raising, arable farming and trading.

Rescuers pulled survivors from beneath mounds of collapsed buildings and searched for the missing on Monday after a major earthquake killed at least 279 people and wounded more than 1,000 in mainly Kurdish southeast Turkey.  Hundreds more were feared dead after 7.2 magnitude quake. Thousands of people made homeless and were forced to spend the night on the streets, wrapped in blankets and huddled round open fires.  When this fleshy body is in danger we should do Nama-sankirtan and serve as a mediator to draw and distribute that divine energy.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

So when the general apprehension of destruction comes, whether individual or collective, we shall try our best to utilise our time with the high conception, within divinity. That is very good. It is also appreciable that where the apprehension of danger is acute, one runs there for relief work. That is laudable. Circumstances may vary, and how far the intention is correct in a particular case is to be judged. ... Our aim will be to engage ourselves always in this distribution. Again, distribution may not be the only work. Some are seen to distribute, some are supplying, and others are cooking. Different functions are necessary to save the people.  Some disasters are acute and some minor, but disasters are always occurring. It is not only limited to the human beings, but so many insects, animals and others are also in need of receiving such vibration that comes from the Divine layer. 

Śrīla Bhakti Raksaka Sridhara Mahārāja :
“Distribute In Danger”
http://www.scsmath.com/
http://www.bvml.org/SBRSM/did.html