Turkey sent ships to help evacuate people and vehicles from a northern town on the Black Sea that was hard hit by flooding, as the death toll in the disaster rose Sunday to at least 64 and more people than that remained missing.
Torrential rains pounded the country's northwestern Black Sea provinces on Wednesday, causing flooding that demolished homes, severed bridges, swept away cars and rendered numerous roads unpassable. The Turkish disaster agency AFAD said 54 people were killed in the province of Kastamonu, nine in Sinop and one in Bartın.
A total of 62 people are reported missing in Kastamonu, with 14 others in Sinop, Turkey's Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said on Saturday after inspecting the situation in the Bozkurt district in Kastamonu province alongside Environment and Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum and Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez.
"We delivered 20 tons of food yesterday and today by helicopter alone," Soylu said, adding that officials were trying to meet the needs of victims-from funerals to damage assessment.
Kurum said there were at least 454 severely damaged and ruined buildings in the three provinces, adding that authorities were working on building new structures within the next year.
Emergency crews across the region kept up the search for the missing amid the many buildings that have partially collapsed.
The Turkish defense ministry sent two ships to evacuate people and vehicles from a town in Sinop. They also sent military vehicles that can serve as temporary bridges to help get access to areas where bridges were wiped out.
The heavy flooding came after Turkey endured a searing heatwave and as crews in the south were taming wildfires that raced across the country's Mediterranean coast.
Climate scientists say there's little doubt that climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas is driving more extreme events — such as heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods and storms — as the Earth warms.
