ISTANBUL — An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.2 has shaken Istanbul, Turkey’s emergency management agency says. There were no immediate reports of any damage or injuries.

The earthquake had a magnitude of 6.2 and a shallow depth of 10 kilometers, according to the United States Geological Survey. Its epicenter was some 40 kilometers (25 miles) southwest of Istanbul in the Sea of Marmara.

It was felt in several neighboring regions, reports said.

Turkey is crossed by two major fault lines and earthquakes are frequent.

A magnitude 7.8 earthquake on Feb. 6, 2023 – and a second powerful tremor that came hours later – destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings in 11 southern and southeastern Turkish provinces, leaving more than 53,000 people dead. Another 6,000 people were killed in the northern parts of neighboring Syria.

SWANNANOA, N.C. — Emily Russell remembers feeling hopeful after she managed to get an appointment with the Federal Emergency Management Agency not long after Hurricane Helene ripped though her home in Swannanoa, North Carolina.

But after several assistance requests were denied or left pending, Russell says the agency has been of “no help” to her family after the late September storm. Still reeling in a world turned upside-down by the most damaging storm in state history, she finds herself open to President Donald Trump’s suggestion about “getting rid of” FEMA.

That is a common sentiment in the mountains of western North Carolina, where living in a trailer with limited supplies for months can try anyone’s patience. Russell, who like many others did not have flood insurance, endured those stresses as she prepared for the birth of her son, but then volunteers stepped up to rebuild her home. Back there now, she can cradle her tiny infant in her arms on her newly constructed front porch — overlooking a heaping pile of rotting debris and two Trump-Vance signs posted to a pole in her yard.

Frustration with stopgap relief efforts has been exacerbated by confusion over where long-term help should come from. FEMA is meant to be a first line, providing temporary housing and funding for repairs while insurance foots most of the bill. It is not the message residents heard initially, when politicians, including then-President Joe Biden, who toured the damaged area, promised residents they would have whatever they needed.

As more time passes, the reality of long-term recovery has gotten complicated.

To Russell and many others, Trump saying he would consider eliminating FEMA made sense. To some experts and officials, however, that could cause more problems than it would solve.

Days after Trump took office on Jan. 20, he surveyed the fallout from wildfires in California and the hurricane in North Carolina and suggested that states primarily manage the response to natural disasters. As a candidate, he had disparaged FEMA’s work in the southern states hit by Helene. That criticism, which began almost as soon as the wind stopped blowing, has not stopped.

More recently, FEMA was criticized by Trump adviser Elon Musk over payments to reimburse New York City for hotel costs for migrants. Four FEMA employees were fired, accused of circumventing leadership to make the transactions, which have been standard for years through a program that helps with costs to care for a surge in migration.

North Carolina’s government estimated that Helene caused a record $59.6 billion in damages. FEMA has contributed almost $380 million through public assistance grants to the state and local governments, as well as approximately $372 million directly to North Carolinians as of Feb. 11, according to the agency. FEMA’s responsibilities include direct financial assistance to individuals and reimbursements to governments for recovery tasks like debris removal and rebuilding roads.

Russell was confused when she was denied on her FEMA application, especially after she said an inspector told her the home was a complete loss. Rushing floodwaters tore off the side of her house, and heavy mud seeped inside, warping the floorboards and rendering most things unsalvageable. She thought the home she grew up in would be bulldozed.

Russell called FEMA and spoke with representatives in-person about her denied request. She said they told her she needed receipts for certain personal items, which she did not have.

“To keep being told it’s pending or not approved, it’s just, it’s just a devastating feeling,” Russell said. “I mean, you just feel lost.”

In Buncombe County, where Russell lives, about 70% of homeowners who registered with FEMA received some level of assistance, according to the agency’s data. Approximately 91% of those approved received up to $10,000, while about 3.6% got between $25,000 and a maximum payment that would likely top out at a little over $40,000.

Danny Bailey, a 61-year-old Buncombe County retiree, said he received $42,500 after losing practically everything from flooding, including the trailer he lived in, his sister’s double-wide mobile home and a barn. His family had moved to the property in 1968.

Bailey already spent some of his money on necessities, such as propane to make it through the winter. He lives in a donated trailer on his property, now a muddy, rutted expanse, and said FEMA “should’ve done more.”

“If this is the way they are, he ought to do away with them,” Bailey said of Trump, whose win in North Carolina helped propel him to victory in November.

Bailey ran into issues getting the money. A few days after Helene, he said a FEMA inspector came to his property and told him to go online to apply for disaster assistance, but Bailey had no computer or reliable cell service. He traveled almost 100 miles east to Statesville to use his nephew’s computer, Bailey said, and then had problems getting clear answers from FEMA on his application status. Eventually, he received his money.

“Their attitude was, you know, this happened to you, but it’s up to you to fix it. And I ain’t the one who caused it,” he said with a laugh.

Complaints about FEMA’s application process are common because of the administrative hurdles in place to ensure applicants’ eligibility, said Miyuki Hino, a city and regional planning professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. People may also believe FEMA should provide more assistance when its role is mainly to meet immediate needs such as shelter, Hino said.

There always has been an underlying tension on the federal government’s role in natural disaster response, but Hino said the agency’s increasing politicization could be attributed to the rising frequency of expensive disasters caused by climate change. Dissolving FEMA could create issues when disasters extend beyond state lines or localities need expertise on disasters they are not used to confronting.

Overall, eliminating FEMA would likely slow the recovery process for future disasters, she said.

FEMA’s potential eradication worries Dalton George, the mayor pro tempore of Boone, a mountain town in Watauga County that was ravaged by Helene. Despite understandable frustrations, he said the agency moved quickly to help. It has contributed money for home restorations, as well as keeping several families in hotels under its transitory sheltering program, he said.

“It feels like people are more anti-FEMA than they are about actually solving some of these problems,” George said.

Responsibilities would be partly shifted onto local governments, and George said towns such as Boone do not have resources for that. Private organizations would need to step up more than they have, George said, and they already are overextended.

Vickie Revis relies heavily on private entities such as churches to supply almost everything on her property, including the trailer she stays in with her husband along the Swannanoa River. Her home of eight years was completely swept away by the river — something she used to associate with beauty and peace but now ties to “terror.”

“It’s like a friend that came in and robbed you of everything you have,” Revis said.

Her restoration process, however, will largely be funded by FEMA, as Revis said she received more than $40,000. She said she had no issues with how the agency handled her situation.

Instead, Revis talked at length about the grief she still lives with: lost pets; meaningful possessions that disappeared; home expansion plans to accommodate more family members that will not happen. She said she rarely left her trailer until recently because she could not bear to face the devastation.

Now, it is the rebuilding that keeps Revis going. How long will that go on?

“However long it takes,” she said.

___ Associated Press data journalist Larry Fenn in New York contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — The acting head of the federal agency responsible for responding to disasters said Monday that he’s suspending payments sent to New York City to house migrants and that staff who made them will be held accountable, after Elon Musk blasted the transactions on his social media platform.

Musk, who as head of the Department of Government Efficiency has consolidated control over much of the federal government and is working to cut costs and shrink the workforce, posted on X that his team “just discovered that FEMA sent $59M LAST WEEK to luxury hotels in New York City to house illegal migrants.” He said the money is intended for disaster relief and would be clawed back.

Cameron Hamilton, acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, reposted Musk’s comments and said the payments were suspended as of Sunday.

Musk gave no evidence to support his claim, and information from the city of New York indicated that money it’s received to care for migrants was appropriated by Congress and allocated to the city last year by FEMA.

The city hasn’t been notified of any pause in funding, spokeswoman Liz Garcia said. A statement noted that the city has received federal government reimbursements through the past week and said the matter would be discussed directly with federal officials.

Neither Hamilton nor Musk specified what kind of payments were involved. But the comments on X — reposted thousands of times — likely referred to payments made by the Shelter and Services Program, which gives money to reimburse cities, towns or organizations for immigration-related expenses.

FEMA did not respond to questions about the payments. But spokesman Trisha McLaughlin for the Department of Homeland Security — to which FEMA belongs — pointed to recent statements by Secretary Kristi Noem.

“As Secretary Noem said yesterday, we must get rid of FEMA the way it exists today,” McLaughlin told The Associated Press on Monday. “This is yet another egregious example. Individuals who circumvented leadership and unilaterally made this payment will be fired and held accountable.”

When migrants arrive at the border, they’re often released into the U.S. because the federal government doesn’t have enough space to hold them all. Feeding and housing them often falls on local and state governments, as well as nonprofits.

In 2019, with the number of people coming directly to the southern border climbing dramatically, Congress authorized the federal government to reimburse some of those costs. Those were the first such payments and the beginning of the Shelter and Services Program.

The money comes directly from Congress and is specifically for Customs and Border Protection — also part of the Department of Homeland Security. FEMA administers the payments.

The money is separate from the disaster relief fund, which is FEMA’s main funding stream to help people and governments affected by disasters.

The Shelter and Services Program has become a flashpoint for criticism by Republicans, who incorrectly claim it’s taking money from people hit by hurricanes or floods.

Critics also have questioned whether taxpayer money should go to cities and states where right-to-shelter laws mean everyone must be given a place to stay.

At least two other localities that received money through the Shelter and Services Program said they had not heard from the federal government about whether they would take back the money.

Musk called the $59 million his team has identified “gross insubordination to the President’s executive order” and said the funds would be recouped.

It was not clear where the $59 million figure came from, and officials did not provide details to AP.

The New York City mayor’s office said it received $81 million in payments from the federal government for immigration-related costs last week in two separate pieces — one of which was about $59 million, with $19 million for direct hotel costs.

New York City’s right-to-shelter laws require the city to provide shelter to anyone who’s homeless. It has historically housed homeless people in hotels.

City resources have been strained with an influx of roughly 230,000 migrants since the spring of 2022. In addition to housing migrants temporarily in hotels, it also uses tent complexes.

The city says it currently shelters 46,000 migrants, most of whom are part of families.

In another post Monday, Musk said that under the Biden administration, FEMA took money away from disaster relief and “spent it on 5 star hotels for illegals.”

Garcia said the city has never paid luxury rates. The vast majority are outside Manhattan, and the government has paid on average $152 a night for rooms, according to a 2024 city comptroller report. In comparison, 5-star hotels in Manhattan for the coming weekend run from $400 a night to well over $1,000.

The payments of $81 million, Garcia said, covered reimbursements for November 2023 to October 2024, including hotel, security, food, and other costs. She said the city applied in April, the money was appropriated last year by Congress, and FEMA allocated it last year.

The city has millions more in outstanding reimbursements, she said..

The confusion over the payments comes amid intense interest in FEMA’s future.

In a North Carolina trip last month, President Trump said he was considering “getting rid of ” FEMA. He’s also creating a task force to carry out a “full-scale review” on the organization.

Republicans last fall lambasted FEMA, saying it wasn’t doing enough to help survivors hit by double hurricanes Helene and Milton. The agency was also beset by false claims about the storms and withheld aid — often fueled by Trump and others just ahead of the presidential election.

Criticism of FEMA intensified after the agency announced that a staffer was fired after she directed workers not to go to homes with yard signs supporting Trump.

Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL and unsuccessful Republican congressional candidate from Virginia, previously worked on emergency management issues for the departments of Homeland Security and State but has limited experience handling natural disasters.

He’s been critical of FEMA on social media and outspoken about increasing security along the southern border, where the agency’s resources could be redirected.

Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term prepared by the president’s allies, called for dismantling Homeland Security and relocating FEMA to the Department of Interior or the Department of Transportation.

It also suggested changing the formula that the agency uses to determine when federal disaster assistance is warranted, shifting the costs of preventing and responding to disasters to states.

__

Attanasio reported from New York.

LULING, La. — The crew of a tugboat was quickly rescued when their vessel sank into the Mississippi River following a collision with a tanker ship in Louisiana.

St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne said his office received a report of the collision between the ship and tugboat near the Hale Boggs Memorial Bridge in Luling, Louisiana, on Sunday night.

“Preliminary reports are that all crew members from the tug have been rescued,” Champagne said in a Facebook post around 10 p.m. Sunday.

The sheriff’s office said the tanker was traveling upriver when it struck the tugboat and caused the smaller vessel to sink, WWL-TV reported.

Emergency medical personnel evaluated the crew and would transport them to a hospital for treatment if necessary, the sheriff’s office said.

The U.S. Coast Guard’s 8th District office in New Orleans, known as Coast Guard Heartland, said it dispatched personnel to the scene but the people who went into the river during the crash already had been rescued when the Guard crews arrived, WWL reported.

The Coast Guard told WWL there will be an assessment of possible environmental impacts of the accident site in Luling, about 23 miles (37 kilometers) west of New Orleans.