Many dead and injured after an earthquake in Turkey causes extensive damage.
On 17 August 1999 a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck near the city of Izmit in northwestern Turkey, devastating the region.
In Izmit, RTÉ chief news correspondent Charlie Bird is confronted by a scene of utter desolation.
Nothing prepares you for the devastation, the television pictures, the pictures in the newspapers, do not prepare you for what you actually see on the ground here.
In the absence of a professional search operation, local people are doing the best they can to search through the rubble for fatalities and survivors. So far 1,000 bodies have been recovered, but this death toll is expected to rise considerably.
Right across this city of 600,000 people, there are perhaps about 200 or 300 apartment blocks crumpled to the ground and there are probably a couple of thousand people still beneath them.
Survivors will be spending their second night in the open without electricity or running water,
I don’t think they realise the true extent, the true horror, of what’s after happening here.
The earthquake was so powerful its effects were felt as far as Ankara 200 miles away and many other locations across Turkey.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 18 August 1999. The newsreader is Eileen Dunne. The reporter is Charlie Bird.
