Turkish Karadeniz Holding to send 2 lifeships to provide shelter in quake-hit Hatay

Lifeships designed by Turkish Karadeniz Holding, with a capacity for 3,000 people, including kitchens, education centers, nursery school and polyclinics, are going to Hatay-Iskenderun to provide shelter for victims of two powerful earthquakes that hit Türkiye.

The company told Anadolu that the Karadeniz Lifeship Suheyla Sultan and Karadeniz Lifeship Rauf Bey will be used for the first time for humanitarian aid.

The lifeships will set out from the company’s shipyard in Yalova in the Marmara region and head to Hatay-Iskenderun, one of the most affected cities by the quakes which struck Feb. 6.

The 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes, centered in Türkiye's Kahramanmaras province, have affected 13 million people across 10 Turkish provinces, including Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, Hatay, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye and Sanliurfa, and other countries in the region.

The lifeships can be deployed for up to 20 days and do not require additional infrastructure investment.

"The lifeships, designed as emergency humanitarian aid ships, can operate on their own and are resistant to weather conditions and natural disasters. We focused all our energy on this project to immediately help our people who are already going through a big disaster," according to a company official.

The lifeships include education centers for up to 1,900 students.

Karadeniz Lifeship Süheyla Sultan has 72 rooms, each for 12 people, as well as 116 rooms, each for four to six people.

Karadeniz Lifeship Rauf Bey has 150 containers, each for four to six people and an open accommodation space for 1,000 people.

The company is globally known as the first and only firm providing powerships. Its 36 powerships generating electricity in different countries from Cuba to Ghana and South Africa have a total capacity of 6 gigawatts.