Japanese aid worker killed in Turkey quake
VAN, Turkey -- Japanese aid worker Atsushi Miyazaki came to Turkey in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake last month, tasked with assessing damage and distributing relief supplies to survivors.
Then he too became a victim of Turkey's treacherous fault lines yesterday, fatally injured when a hotel, weakened by the earlier tremor, collapsed in a second quake that killed at least 11 others.
Dozens of angry residents protested at the rubble of the downtown hotel where Miyazaki, 41, and others died, arguing that authorities should have closed it and another leveled hotel because they had been damaged by the first temblor. Riot police used pepper spray to halt the protests.
The demonstration erupted as rescue workers with pickaxes and earthmovers searched for survivors of Wednesday night's magnitude-5.7 quake, which hit the same region slammed by a 7.2 temblor on Oct. 23 that left 600 people dead in the eastern province of Van.
Some 28 people were pulled out of the rubble in the provincial capital, also called Van, as frantic rescue efforts lasted through the night under high-powered lights. The fatalities occurred in the two collapsed hotels.
Anatolia agency said Miyazaki, of Association for Aid and Relief, Japan, died in a hospital after being dug out yesterday from the rubble of the five-story Bayram Hotel. CPR was performed on him before he was taken to the hospital.
"We first heard a voice but could not determine whether it was that of a woman or a man. Then we opened a small hole in the concrete where we thought the voice came," a Turkish rescue worker told state-run TRT television. "When I checked inside with my hand, he suddenly grabbed my fingers. I will never forget that moment for the rest of my life." TRT did not identify the rescue worker.
Miyazaki's colleague, Miyuki Konnai, 32, was rescued alive from the wreckage of the same hotel late Wednesday, and the aid group said she was in stable condition.
"We spoke with her briefly, she is in a hospital," manager Ikuko Natori told The Associated Press by telephone from Tokyo. "She had a slight injury, but it is not life-threatening."
Yumeka Ota, a third worker who traveled to Turkey with Miyazaki and Konnai, had returned to Japan before the second quake.
