Turkey: When the person struck by the earthquake said, let’s all die together in one place
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. We were swinging from side to side for about a minute.”
This is to say of Nilofer Aslan, a resident of the southern Turkish city of Adana, who was talking about the magnitude of the terrible earthquake coming in Syria and Lebanon, including Turkey this morning.
In the Turkish city of Adana, Aslan told the BBC about the timing of the earthquake: “When the apartment started shaking, I knew my family would no longer survive. I thought we would die in the earthquake.”
He remembers calling his relatives living in other rooms. He says, “I said this is an earthquake, come at least we die together in the same place. That’s all that came to my mind.”
When the earthquake stopped, Aslan ran outside and saw that four buildings around him had collapsed.
He said, “I could not take anything with me while fleeing, only came out in slippers.”
A 7.8-magnitude earthquake rocked Turkey’s southeastern region of Ghazi Antep on Monday morning, killing hundreds of people and bringing many buildings to the ground.
Relief work continues amid chaos
According to Turkey’s Interior Minister Suleyman Suvelo, 10 cities have been destroyed by this terrible earthquake, including Ghazi Antep, Qahraman, Marash, Hatay, Osmania, Adyaman, Malatiya, Sanliarfa, Adana, Dayar Bakr and Kilis.
The governor of Osmania said that 34 buildings have been destroyed in the state. Several videos have been shared online from Turkey in which residential buildings can be seen collapsing while rescue workers search for people buried under the rubble.
Immediately after the earthquake, the BBC has tried to know its magnitude by talking to some people who survived the earthquake in other nearby countries including Turkey.
“The windows of the building in front of us were shattered”
25-year-old Ozgul Konakchi, who lives in the Turkish city of Malatya, says she survived the earthquake but the after-effects and cold weather are a problem for her.
Konakchi told BBC Turkey: “Efforts are on to search and rescue people inside the rubble. It is very cold here and it is snowing at the moment. Everyone is on the streets, people are wondering what to do. In front of our eyes The windows of a building were broken due to the impact of the earthquake.”
Konakchi and his brothers were sleeping on the sofa when the earthquake struck.
“We looked at each other and asked, are you moving? I looked at the lamp, it looked like it was going to fall over. We jumped off the sofa as soon as our three-year-old nephew came into the room. Gave.”
He said that his building has been damaged and five buildings in the vicinity have collapsed.
He told that there is a traffic jam in the city as people are trying to move away from the buildings due to the aftershock.
“I felt like I was in a baby swing”
Apart from Turkey, the people of Syria have also spoken about their fear and their uneasiness after the devastating earthquake that struck early in the morning.
Samar, a resident of the Syrian capital Damascus, told the news agency Reuters that paintings fell from the walls of the house. “I got up in a panic. After that we all dressed up and stood at the door.”
“I felt myself in a baby swing,” said Ardam, a resident of the Turkish city of Ghazi Antep, describing his condition at the time of the quake. “I’ve never felt anything like this in forty years,” he told Reuters by phone. . Everyone is sitting in their vehicles or trying to take the vehicle to the open space away from the buildings. I think that not a single person in Ghazi Antep will be in his house anymore. ,
Whole building was shaking, I thought there was an explosion: Lebanese student
“I was writing something when suddenly the whole building shook. I thought there was a loud bang,” said a student from Lebanon’s capital Beirut, about 450 km from the epicenter.
He said, “I was standing near the window and I was afraid that it would break. The tremors continued intermittently for four to five minutes and it was a dreadful sight.”
The BBC’s correspondent in Dhir Bakr reports that a shopping mall in the city has been destroyed.
BBC producer Rushdi Abulouf says the house he was staying in shook for 45 seconds.
Turkey is located in one of the most active earthquake zones in the world.
During the year 1999, more than 17 thousand people were killed in a major earthquake in the northwestern region of Turkey.
