ISTANBUL, Feb. 7 (Xinhua) -- The highway from Türkiye's northwestern part to the southern region was packed with trucks and cars on Monday evening carrying all sorts of aid materials and construction equipment. Although it was late at night with snow and ice on the road, they were all in a hurry to go to the earthquake zone as soon as possible.
Ahmet Moris, an employee of a private company, has loaded an earth mover into a trailer truck in the Bolu province, heading to Gaziantep, an area the quake has badly hit.
"We are going to help our citizens there," Moris told Xinhua at a rest area on the highway. "We do this for humanity, our citizens, and our people."
The journey to the earthquake zone was expected to be challenging, as heavy snowfall covered many parts of the roads and disturbed transportation.
Moris anticipated that the journey would take as much as 15 hours and he would arrive in Gaziantep on Tuesday at around noon.
"We will use the highway until Adana. After the highway, we will use the ring road. I mean, wherever the police allow us, we'll take the open road," he said.
Fuat Gencturk, a municipal worker at the Kocaeli Municipality, was delivering a construction machine to Kahramanmaras, the epicenter of the earthquake.
"The job will be either building demolition or debris removal," Gencturk told Xinhua. "We left Kocaeli at about five o'clock (1400 GMT). If we are lucky, we will be there at noon. We are two drivers, and we can go without stopping."
While Gencturk was speaking to Xinhua, a convoy of Turkish Red Crescent carrying food supplies passed by.
A magnitude-7.7 earthquake struck Türkiye's southern province of Kahramanmaras at 4:17 a.m. local time (0117 GMT). It was followed by a magnitude-6.4 quake a few minutes later in the country's southern province of Gaziantep and a magnitude-7.6 earthquake at 1:24 p.m. local time (1024 GMT) in the Kahramanmaras Province.
According to the latest official data, 2,316 people were killed, and 13,293 others were injured in Türkiye. Search and rescue operations continue at full speed round the clock as many people have been trapped under the rubble in cold and rainy weather. ■
