Quake site compels hunt for memories

CELTIKSUYU, Turkey - Hanefi Beldek picked up scraps of paper and notebooks scattered around the rubble of a dormitory that collapsed in an earthquake three days ago, killing at least 77 of his schoolmates.

"What I'm really looking for is my diary that was signed by all my friends. There is nothing in the world that I want more right now," the 15-year-old boy said, crying.

Four more bodies were pulled from the rubble of the dormitory Saturday, but 13 children remained unaccounted for. The magnitude 6.4 quake, which struck early Thursday, killed at least 159 people in the region.

"The sky opened suddenly and the entire third floor went down like an elevator," Beldek said. "I can't stop thinking about that horrible night. I can't leave this place. I don't sleep and I don't eat."

Rescuers said there was little chance anyone was still alive under the concrete slabs and twisted steel of the dormitory, and no one has been found alive there since Friday morning.

Even so, hundreds of people stood waiting nearby, some still hoping for a miracle.

"I will not lose my hope until the last one comes out," said Mustafa Gurhan, the school's principal. "Their faces are constantly in my mind."

Fehmi Birgonul, 15, said he last heard his best friend's voice when he screamed from behind the wall. "He screamed "Help me!' then his voice was cut off," Birgonul said. "Then his coffin came yesterday."

More than 1,000 were injured by the quake, officials in the nearby city of Bingol said. It was unclear whether the official death toll included all the bodies pulled from the dormitory rubble.

The earthquake collapsed the dormitory housing 198 children, most of them the sons and daughters of poor Kurdish farmers from surrounding villages with no schools of their own.

Inspectors took samples from the crumbled building Saturday after the government launched an investigation into the contractor who built the collapsed school. The columns of the four-story building apparently lacked steel support rods and sufficient concrete, and the collapsing building crushed the children as they slept.

Although Turkey has suffered several massive quakes over the past decade, experts say little has been done to address the problem of poor construction, which was blamed for many of the more than 18,000 deaths from 1999 quakes in western Turkey.

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