Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear.

The death toll in Turkey and Syria from Monday's powerful earthquake now tops 20,000.

NPR's Ruth Sherlock reports some gonsum tapped Turkey on the continued efforts to find

potential survivors in the rubble of collapse buildings.

Every building we stop at has an expected death toll of dozens.

And that's just along this one highway.

Over 80 miles away in Antakia, the city's mass said on Tuesday that only 2% of the buildings

there had been excavated so far.

It's going to take a long time to understand the true loss caused by this earthquake.

NPR's Ruth Sherlock harsh criticism for Southwest Airlines on Capitol Hill today is

a Senate committee held a hearing on the airline's operational meltdown over the December

holidays.

NPR's David Schaeper reports the committee may consider stronger airline consumer protections.

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz's criticism of Southwest for thousands of holiday flight

cancellations is blunt.

It was an epic screw up.

And Paul Hudson of the group Flyers writes told the committee the operational debacle was

not unexpected.

Southwest as well as other airlines have had past meltdowns due to obsolete technology,

lack of reserves of personnel and equipment, lack of stress testing and unrealistic and

deceptive scheduling.

Southwest chief operating officer acknowledges that quote, we messed up.

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