Istanbul hit with worst flooding in decades

Two months worth of rain in one hours left at least 23 people dead and levelled numerous buildings in Turkey, while more downpours are expected.

ISTANBUL // A man was sitting on the side of a white minibus that had turned over on its right side and was nearly inundated by rushing, brown water. Close by, a group of other men, some stripped to their waist, were trying to get close enough to the bus to throw a rope. Finally the man on the bus was able to hold on to the rope, and the others pulled him through the torrent to safety. When he reached the group, the rescuers hugged and kissed him.

Such dramatic scenes as this played out in Turkey's metropolis, Istanbul, yesterday morning, after clouds unloaded two months' worth of rain in one hour on western parts of the European side of the city, the heaviest rain Istanbul has seen since 1929. The water turned a four-lane motorway into a rushing stream, pushed heavy lorries on top of each other, flooded buildings and killed at least 23 people. Since Tuesday, when heavy rain started in outlying areas of Istanbul, at least 29 people have died. Eight people were still missing in the early afternoon, according to media reports.

"Istanbul has suffered the worst natural disaster in recent years," Muammer Guler, the governor of Istanbul province, told reporters. "No kind of infrastructure can withstand that." Dozens of motorists, going to work in the early hours of the day, were trapped by the quickly rising waters in the industrial district of Ikitelli. Television footage showed people cowering on the roof of buses, while smaller vehicles were carried away by the water on the four-lane road connecting the Trans-European Motorway, Istanbul's main international transport link, with the Ataturk airport.

One man, standing on the roof of a bus that was caught by the current, quickly jumped onto a bigger municipal bus to save himself. Others were less lucky. When a bus bringing women to their workplace in a textile factory was trapped by the waters, women sitting in front of the vehicle could escape, but seven others drowned because there were no windows in the back of the bus, Mr Guler said. Later, six military helicopters plucked people from the roof of a factory, while boats of the fire brigade battled against the strong current on the flooded motorway to reach people trapped on buses and in cars. Television footage from a helicopter flying over the affected area showed whole neighbourhoods flooded and strewn with mud and debris.

Amid the ensuing chaos, public order broke down in some parts of the affected area, evoking the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the United States in 2005. Media reports said looters in small vans arrived to raid shops even as buses and other vehicles were being pulled from the receding waters before noon. The NTV news channel quoted fire brigade officials as saying that looters were stealing goods from cars in the area. Television pictures showed dozens of people taking new hunting rifles from the back of a stranded lorry before police intervened. It was not clear whether all the rifles were recovered.

Media reports said 90 litres of rain per square metre had fallen in Ikitelli in one hour, twice the amount seen in an average month of September. The mayor Kadir Topbas said the city had seen the heaviest rains in 80 years. Mr Topbas also warned that the worst may be yet to come. Tomorrow will bring new rain, which may turn out to be "one and a half times as severe" as the downpour of yesterday, he was quoted as saying.

One of the worst-hit places was a yard where drivers park their lorries next to a motorway. The yard, lying in a small valley next to a canal, filled up with water quickly in the early morning hours, and many lorries, with their sleeping drivers in them, were turned over or pushed into each other. Television footage later showed rescue teams pulling the lifeless body of a driver from one of the vehicles. At least eight people died in the yard.

"I was woken by a noise," one driver told Turkish television. "I called the other drivers: 'Get up, the flood is coming.' All of a sudden I was in the water and held on to a tree." As the rain stopped around noon and the clean-up operations got underway, so did the search for the reasons for the disaster. Mr Topbas and Veysel Eroglu, Turkey's minister for the environment, said illegal buildings have been erected in some low-lying areas, reinforcing the consequences of flooding.

City planning and infrastructure development has been lagging behind the steep population growth in Istanbul, as Turkey's biggest city attracted millions of migrants from poorer regions of the country. Authorities have often pledged to strengthen controls, but have mostly failed to act on their promise. "Istanbul is the capital of shame," the web edition of the Hurriyet daily said in a headline. Mr Eroglu also blamed global warming for the appearance of ever more extreme weather conditions. "Incidents of flooding will increase," he said.