Amid the ruins, they whisper `The end of the world will be like this'

THEY ARE talking about the end of the world in Kaynasli. "All the books say it will be like this: the Koran, the Bible," Mustafa Tuncer said, looking at the ruins of his town. "The world will end with earthquakes and floods."

It was easy to understand how they felt. Kaynasli, 100 miles east of Istanbul, looks as if an apocalypse has visited it. The town bore the worst of the earthquake that ripped through on Friday night, the second to hit Turkey in three months. So far the official death toll is at least 370; no one doubts it will rise.

Every other building in Kaynasli is rubble. The number of dead in the town is 138, and they are still pulling out bodies. There is a great crack running through buildings and tarmac where the quake tore the ground apart.

The long drive here is the stuff of nightmare. Wrecked buildings line the road and columns of black smoke rise where people are burning tyres to keep warm. At night, the temperature sinks to -5C.

Everybody is looking for a reason why Turkey should be struck twice. "There are more earthquakes all over the world," said one man. "Look at Athens, Taiwan." And there are the doom-mongers, like Mr Tuncer, and people who say this was a punishment and that the dead somehow deserved what they got. One man said God was wiping out the human race, to start again.

Diber Ozdemir thought she had found a prediction of the two earthquakes in the Koran. "It's written here," she said, pushing over an old Turkish translation. "And it says there will be more, all over the world."

Beside her sat her friend Gullu Oksuz, staring wild-eyed."Two of my children died," she said. "I got out, but two of my children died." Her husband was away, working in Russia. Nobody had been able to get in touch to tell him his daughters were dead, crushed when four storeys crashed through their basement flat.

Meliha Ay stood watching as rescuers sent sniffer dogs into her apartment block. She had just seen them pull out the body of her brother-in-law. Her mother was still inside.

Rescuers gave up on the cafe in the town centre. It was no use, they said. They had found people inside but they were all dead. The quake came in the middle of a football match and the cafe was packed. At least 70 people were inside; 12 came out alive.

"Three seconds after the shaking started, the building fell around us," one said. "I managed to crawl out. When I saw how I had got out I was terrified." The hole he had escaped through was tiny: six stories had collapsed on the cafe.

There were other miraculous escapes. Necme Ozgur pushed me to where she had crawled out: it was a tiny crack, with two intact storeys hanging perilously over it. "I don't know how I got out," she said. "God got me out. It's the only way." Somehow her entire family survived. But Ms Ozgur was heartbroken. "Everything we had is gone," she said. "All our money was in the flat. Our car is under there, crushed. God will have to protect us: we've got nothing."

The town is short of tents, and most people have nowhere warm to sleep. Most who spoke to me had not slept for two days: they had spent the nights as they spend the days, staring at the ruins and trying to find survivors.

Yet while all this suffering goes on and more quakes are predicted, politicians are pressing ahead with preparations for their hour in the limelight. This week Bill Clinton and other leaders will be in Istanbul - which seismologists say may be next in line for a quake - for a summit of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe.

At least the army turned up this time. And relief efforts, civil and military, have been better organised. The road through Kaynasli has already been resurfaced for emergency teams to get through.

Professor Hayrettin Koral, a seismologist, was hunched by the chasm that runs through Kaynasli. "It's not the end of the world," he laughed, "though it probably felt like it for the people living here. Turkey was struck twice because one earthquake can set off another." There could be more on the way. "But there's no point trying to say when: we can't. What we need to do is learn to live with the quakes. It is possible to build houses that can withstand them."

Behind him was the proof. Two buildings sat astride the faultline. One, a mosque, lay in ruins, blue tiles smashed by the dome. But beside it the building that housed the mosque lavatories and offices stood unharmed. The faultline had ripped right underneath it, and it stood.

Bayram Kursan gazed at the town. "This used to be a beautiful place," he said. "But now..." His voice tailed off. He couldn't finish the sentence.

Turkey disaster, page 11