The death toll reported after last week’s flooding in Istanbul and the neighbouring province of Kocaeli has risen to eight after recovery teams found further bodies. Istanbul Governor Davut Gül said six of the people who died were in Istanbul. The other two had been swept away in Kocaeli and were recovered in Pendik, on Istanbul’s south-eastern side.
The figure is a count of bodies found by search-and-rescue teams, rather than a prediction of the final number of fatalities. One person was still reported missing in Istanbul when the latest update was given, and searches were continuing. The distinction in the tally is important: the total of eight includes two people who died in the neighbouring province, even though their bodies were recovered within Istanbul.
The flooding followed torrential rain on Wednesday 14 October. The earlier official account on 15 October said two people had died and that 2,727 people stranded by flooding or water inundation had been evacuated safely. A further official update the following day said that one of five people reported missing had been found alive, while searches continued for the other four. It also described the disaster as the largest flood event since 1942.
The reported casualty figure then changed as recovery work continued. Three deaths had been confirmed by Thursday after the rain. A fourth body was found on Friday, and a fifth was recovered on Sunday in the Golden Horn. On Monday, the governor’s office said another man who had been reported missing had been found near Ayvansaray ferry pier. The two Kocaeli victims whose bodies reached Pendik brought the total number of bodies recovered to eight. The latest position should not be treated as a final casualty account while one person remains missing.
Damage assessment is continuing alongside the search operation. Gül said the flooding had generated about 19,300 reports covering different problems. At that stage, around 2,000 homes and about 900 businesses had been assessed as having suffered serious damage. The report total is not a count of damaged buildings: it includes a wider range of calls and incidents, while the figures for homes and businesses refer to the serious damage identified at that point.
Authorities had already mobilised a large response as the rain struck. An official statement on 15 October said rainfall had reached as much as 272 kilograms per square metre in some parts of Istanbul. It recorded 46,597 personnel, 2,288 vehicles and 14 boats working in the city, with 8,597 of those personnel assigned to search and rescue. Schools in Istanbul were suspended for two days as further heavy rain was expected.
By 16 October, the local operation was still reported to involve about 46,000 personnel, alongside a wider national deployment of close to 60,000. The official account then said 9,850 verified calls had reached Istanbul’s emergency call centre. These figures describe the scale of the response during the emergency; they do not establish how long each district would take to recover or the eventual cost of the damage.
Financial assistance was also being issued to affected residents. Payments of 10,000 Turkish lira had been made to 5,200 people on the Friday after the flooding, with the same amount due to a further 2,500 people on Monday. The announced support and the damage figures remain separate from the continuing search. The confirmed position in the latest update is eight bodies recovered, six deaths in Istanbul, two Kocaeli victims recovered in Pendik, and one person still missing in Istanbul.
