The death toll from the powerful earthquake that struck southern Turkey and Syria on February 6th has jumped to more than 7,800. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has declared a three-month state of emergency in 10 provinces affected by the earthquake.
On the day of the powerful earthquake, cracks appeared in the terminal of the port of Iskenderun, a major port in southern Turkey, causing a large number of containers to tip over in the storage yard and causing a fire, forcing port operations to halt.
Despite firefighting efforts, the fire is understood to have broken out in the centre of the container storage area on Monday night and spread widely overnight. Hundreds of containers caught fire at the port of Iskenderun on Tuesday.
Graph source：Reuters
Drone footage showed fierce flames blackening hundreds of shipping containers on the dock, fire trucks spewing jets of water that were dwarfed by the size of the blaze and thick black smoke billowing into the sky.
Graph source：Reuters
Turkish shipping agency Tribeca said on Tuesday that fires were still burning in some cargo areas of the port of Iskenderenlimak. The fire halted all operations at the terminal until further notice and forced cargo lines to divert ships to other ports.
As port firefighting efforts continue, the large container shipping company serving Iskenderen port has announced plans to move ships to other ports such as Mersin. Maersk, CMA Cma and Haplodt all issued relevant notices.
Maersk said logistics and transport infrastructure near the epicentre had been severely damaged, including the port of Iskenderun. Given the severe structural damage that has caused all operations to cease completely until further notice, the company is seeking to divert the vessel as required.
Maersk said in an update on Tuesday that it was not accepting any new bookings to or from Iskenderen at this time and was making contingency plans to divert to nearby ports and arrange additional feeder ships.
The company also said its teams have been working to assess the situation and potential cargo losses, but local authorities have not yet fully brought the fire under control. It was not immediately clear how long it would take to resume work and when the port could conduct a full inspection of the damage.
Heberot also said it was receiving cargo from Mersin port due to the closure of Iskenderen port.
Cma issued a notice on February 7 saying that the port of Iskenderun had been affected by a strong earthquake and would be closed for a period of time, so it had to divert cargo to Mersin. The following two schemes are provided:
1、Unloading at Mersin and delivering containers at Mersin instead of Iskenderen port;
2、Unloading at Mersin and intermodal transport from Mersin (carrier transport) to a place of the customer's choice.
A source at a container broker said the fire was likely to have originated from a container filled with flammable industrial oil, judging by the flames and smoke. Other containers toppled over, hampering access for emergency workers. On Monday, local authorities tried unsuccessfully to use boats to fight the fire, with damage from the quake hampering access to the site.
Separately, operations were halted at the giant oil terminal in Ceyhan, less than 100 miles from the epicenter. The terminal receives crude oil through pipelines from Iraq and Azerbaijan and loads it onto VLCS for export, typically handling about 1 million barrels a day.
Oil pipelines run through the quake zone and while no damage has been found, they have been shut down as a precaution until inspections are completed.
