We only aspired to die together”: the heartbreaking stories of some survivors of the earthquake in Turkey

There are no words to describe the terror and chaos that Turkey experienced due to two earthquakes of 7.5 and 7.8 degrees. The images speak for themselves, as do many heartbreaking testimonies that account for what happened.

The death toll in Syrian territory totals 237 so far and the number of wounded rises to 639, without counting possible victims in opposition territory, the official Syrian news agency SANA reported.

The images show the damage to residential buildings, which completely collapsed in the middle of the night. The emergency services work with the certainty that the death toll will be much higher.

7.8 magnitude earthquake is recorded in Turkey, at least 52 deaths are reported

Many survivors have also been pulled from the rubble. The BBC reviewed the testimony of a family in the city of Adana (southern Turkey) who was in their apartment, on the fifth floor, when the tremor occurred.

“I had never seen anything like this in my life. We swayed for almost a minute,” said Nilüfer Aslan. The man tried to reunite the whole family and revealed that “we only aspired to die together, at least in the same place. It was the only thing that crossed my mind.”

The reporters found him on the street, in slippers. they ran away once the movement stopped, because they were afraid that the building would collapse, as indeed happened to those around them.

“Enner Valencia and his family are fine,” says the footballer’s representative after the earthquake in Turkey

Earthquake in Turkey: “We are alive”

At the same time, AP revealed the testimony of journalism student Muhammet Fatih Yavus, who revealed that he could hear a survivor shouting “I no longer have strength” from under the rubble, while rescuers tried to reach him.

Farther east, in Diyarbakir, cranes and rescue teams carried people on stretchers from a mountain of concrete floors that was once an apartment building. “We are alive,” they said.

A woman and her brother recounted that they were sleeping on the sofa when the earthquake struck, “I looked at the lamp, it looked like it was going to collapse. As soon as we caught my three-year-old nephew, we ran away.”

His building was damaged, but other surrounding ones collapsed, outright. He recounts that his neighbors have clogged the streets, because people are desperate to get away from the buildings for fear of aftershocks.

In the Turkish city of Gaziantep, Erdem described to Reuters that he had felt shaken “like a baby in a cradle. He had never felt anything like this in the 40 years that I have lived ”.

(YO)

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