Bags of trash litter the sidewalks, but there is no trash service here to pick them up. They wet their hands with bottled water donated by local vendors. Women rub a popular citrus liquid cleanser on their hands. People wear masks or cover their faces with scarves to protect their lungs from the smoke that drifts here from neighboring Izmit, where an oil refinery fire burned after the earthquake. Officials fear that the pollution may lead to poisonous acid rain and may evacuate the city.
Turkey needs bulldozers to dig for corpses.
Rain showers exasperated the situation when runoff contaminated by dead bodies in rubble piles flowed into the streets. Officials fear massive disease outbreaks if steps are not taken to provide more sanitary conditions. In Golcuk, trucks drive through the streets, spreading white lime powder to fight disease. And as soon as corpses are pulled from the debris, they are wrapped in shrouds for burial. Then rescue workers load them into trucks and take them to mass graves.