Naomi Cohen at n+1:
ISTANBUL HAS THE WORLD’S LARGEST AIRPORT, but our corner of it is as hushed as a hospital waiting room. There are no X-ray screeners, no rowed seating or gates, no last calls. Only an expensive-looking clock that makes our heads turn. Every tick seems to mark another passing, sorting the living from the dead.
Some sixty rescue volunteers from across Istanbul, we have gathered here, the second morning after two earthquakes sheared a 185-mile gash from the lower gut of Turkey into the western tip of Syria. We will fly, a team leader says as they hand me a blank boarding pass, to the epicenter of the first quake (Maraş), from where we will drive to the epicenter of the second (Gaziantep), to join our co-volunteers in Islahiye, a town about halfway down the gash and deep into its scab. Our task is to help free people from their homes and to do it fast. Some of them are presently trying to free themselves.
more here.