Gül, a single mother, surrounded by her six children, says that she doesn’t know how it happened but it happened. When they all woke up in the dark and their building started shaking, they all gathered and she started praying. It came out on its own, she says, and that she prayed and prayed and that it was then, a few seconds that felt like an eternity, that the shaking stopped.
They all left the house. The building collapsed. “Luckily we are all fine, and I think we have been very lucky. Now we have a kind of roof over our heads, and hot food provided for us,” says Gül, a resident of the city of Osmaniye in the south of Turkey, one of the hardest hit by Monday’s earthquake.
In Osmaniye, she and her family are lucky. In the south of the city, in a former amusement park, the Turkish emergency services have created a city of tents out of nothing which would seem infinite if it weren’t for the attractions surrounding it. “We’re housing about 3,000 people now, and we try to keep track of exactly who is where, how many people in each tent,” explains a volunteer.
Buildings in danger
Osmaniye, is a changed city. At first glance, it doesn’t seem as badly affected as other places: there are collapsed buildings everywhere, but most of the houses and dwellings are still standing. But they are only just standing: it is hard to find a building that is not damaged, crooked, without a missing wall or two.
“My house didn’t fall down, but the whole neighborhood will have to be pulled down. There is no safe building anymore,” explains a neighbor. Thus, the inhabitants of this neighborhood – and of dozens of neighborhoods in the region, both in southern Turkey and northern Syria – have become homeless overnight.
Some, like Gül and his son Mehmet, have a roof over their heads, albeit a plastic one. Most sleep on the street or in cars. “We have friends who are having to sleep in the open, many people who have nothing. And they stay with other families in vans or cars,” Gül says.
Mehmet is a bit more optimistic. “Trucks of clothes, food, water, tea, blankets are arriving here… It’s very cold at night, but I think we’re okay,” says the son. His mother does not correct him, but stays close by: “Yes, but we know that in the villages and further south, in Antakya, the situation is desperate. There are many places where the aid has not reached“.
The figures are impossible to follow. The simplest is this: 5.000 buildings collapsed, tens of thousands with damage. The difficult one is that of more than 12,000 dead between Turkey and Syria, which continue to add up as the hours pass.
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