QUAKE FATALITIES TOP 4,000.

Byline: Stephen Kinzer The New York Times

More than 1,000 relief workers from 19 countries joined the frantic search Wednesday for victims of Tuesday's devastating earthquake as grieving survivors raised an outcry over shoddy construction practices and lax government regulations.

Although rescue workers continued to find people alive under the rubble of collapsed buildings, the death toll climbed steadily: By Wednesday night, according to an official count, 3,879 bodies had been recovered. More than 16,000 people were listed as seriously injured.

Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit warned that the death toll could rise further. He said rescue teams had been unable to reach some areas because roads are impassable and communications disrupted.

Parliament met in special session, and members listened gravely as the minister of Public Works and Housing, Koray Aydin, described the extent of the calamity.

``We are facing the greatest natural disaster in the history of the Turkish Republic,'' Aydin said. ``For the first time, we have had an earthquake that affected the area where 45 percent of the Turkish population lives.''

Foreign help is especially vital because early rescue efforts by the Turkish authorities have been plagued by inexperience, poor organization and lack of supplies. In some stricken towns, newly arrived foreigners found no organized rescue effort under way and took charge themselves, directing battalions of eager volunteers.

Government under attack

News commentators pilloried the government for what they said were inexcusable lapses, both in preparing for an earthquake that scientists said was sure to come and in dealing with it after it struck.

``The rescue effort is a fiasco,'' one Istanbul newspaper asserted. Another said, ``Rescue and relief is coming late or not at all.''

Several experts blamed unscrupulous contractors and ineffective inspectors for having contributed to the scope of the catastrophe by allowing the construction of flimsy buildings that could not withstand a quake.

``The inevitable happened, despite years and years of repeated warnings,'' said Ahmet Ercan, a professor of geophysics at Istanbul Technical University. ``Officials refused to face facts. They never insisted that contractors survey the risks and build earthquake-resistant structures. Maybe after this bitter experience, we will update our regulations along the lines of Japan, the United States and Mexico.''

The epicenter of the quake was near Izmit, about 55 miles east of Istanbul. There, an astonishing number of the destroyed buildings were new, built within the past five years.

Semiha Adiyaman, a plump and vigorous grandmother in her 60s, lived in an apartment, one of five five-story buildings perched together on a hilltop just outside of Izmit.

Wednesday she stood by possessions that workers had extracted from the rubble: a pile of clothing, suitcases that did not close, curtains, a kitchen chair.

Then she clambered over concrete debris to the fringes of the rock pile that was once her home.

``This is what you should look into,'' she said angrily, grabbing hold of quarter-inch steel rods jutting out of the concrete. ``This is too thin, and it was done to save money. Somebody needs to look into this and ask if the buildings were too weak.''

Many other resident of Izmit posed similar questions, complaining that contractors had scrimped on the amount of cement used to bind the concrete.

Shopping reopens

In Darica, a suburb of Izmit, the central shopping area reopened more or less normally Wednesday. The weekly street markets bustled, selling everything from fruit to shoes. Yet on the hilltop where Adiyaman lived, perhaps a mile away, three out of five identical apartment buildings had been flattened.

Fatal earthquakes are common in Turkey, occurring about once every two years. But most strike the rugged and sparsely populated eastern provinces. This one hit the country's densely populated industrial heartland, the region southwest of Istanbul.

Some neighborhoods in Istanbul itself were also damaged, but Tuesday's quake was not the enormous one that some scientists say is likely to strike this teeming metropolis sometime in the coming decades.

Historic monuments such as the Haghia Sophia, once the seat of Byzantine power, and Topkapi Palace, from which Ottoman sultans ruled, were unscathed by Tuesday's powerful quake.

Quake one of strongest

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 7.8 but downgraded that to 7.4, one of the strongest of the century anywhere in the world. Turkish seismologists put its strength at 7.4.

``It's an extremely serious quake, really terrible,'' said a foreign diplomat who toured the affected area by car and helicopter. ``You see these huge heaps of rubble and you ask, How are they ever going to get anyone out of there? It's a God-awful mess.''

There were no new aftershocks Wednesday, but many Turkish families in the earthquake zone have nonetheless chosen to remain in tents or other outdoor shelters for a few more days.

With so much effort being made to rescue those who are believed still alive, there has been little time to assess long-term damage. But television footage from many towns showed utter destruction that will certainly cripple Turkey's effort to climb out of the economic troubles into which it has fallen this year.

Turkish television stations broadcast nearly nonstop coverage of relief efforts. The most poignant scenes showed victims being brought out from the wreckage of collapsed buildings. Overwrought spectators cheered and sobbed each time a survivor was found, and simply sobbed when bodies, including many of small children, were seen to be lifeless.

Although Izmit and the nearby town of Adapazari were believed to have been the hardest hit, another focus of the relief effort is the port of Golcuk on the Sea of Marmara. The navy base there was destroyed, and local officials said 100 bodies could lie beneath the rubble.

Unstable geology

Turkey sits atop some of the world's most unstable geology. Scientists said Tuesday's earthquake was along the Anatolia Fault, a 100-mile arc that winds beneath northwestern provinces near Istanbul.

``It was certainly no surprise,'' said Ahmet Mete Isikara, director of an observatory in Istanbul and a leading specialist on earthquake risk. ``There is no technique for predicting earthquakes, so we couldn't say when it would happen. But we knew it would, sooner or later.

``This Anatolia Fault zone is quite complex, but certainly the possibility of an even bigger earthquake, even one in Istanbul, is still there. Most probably we will get a lot of lessons from this quake. We have to, otherwise we will suffer the same thing in the future.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos, Box, Map

Photo: (1--Color) A woman cries as rescuers try to save her brother, who was trapped for 37 hours under rubble before being brought out alive Wednesday. See Page 17 for suggestions on preparing to survive a major earthquake.

Dimitri Messinis/Associated Press

(2--Color) Residents of Izmit grieve after learning their neighbors and parents were killed in the earthquake.

Stanton R. Winter/The New York Times

Box: WHY TURKEY?

Source: U.S. Geological Survey

Associated Press 

Map: Izmit epicenter - North Anatolian Fault