Türkiye quakes: Survivor accounts from the epicentre

Elbistan, a town of 150,000 people in Türkiye’s Mediterranean province of Kahramanmaras, was the epicentre of one of Türkiye’s two devastating earthquakes. The first one hit the Pazarcik district in Kahramanmaras province with a magnitude of 7.7 at around midnight on Monday, followed by the second strike destroying Elbistan with a 7.6 magnitude in the afternoon. 

“It felt like someone pounded our house’s walls with a sledgehammer as dust fell on our heads,” says Kemal Akkus, a 62-year-old resident of Kahramanmaras’s Elbistan district. 

The two strikes left a large section of the town’s population under debris. 

“When the first quake hit, we were not affected much and were able to get out of our house,” Akkus, a retiree of the district’s sugar factory, tells TRT World. 

As the first jolt subsided, Akkus and his family returned to their house. They stayed in the house’s bedroom to gather themselves. But the second shock was too hard to handle. 

Akkus recalls, "it lasted for a long time,” and added that he quickly grabbed his 5-year-old child and stumbled down the intensely shaking staircase. Seconds later, his wife and the other two kids managed to come out to safer ground as well. 

Apart from the Kahramanmaras province, the two powerful quakes and the many aftershocks have left their deadly impact across the country’s ten cities - Osmaniye, Hatay, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Diyarbakir, Mardin, Malatya, Kilis, Adana, Adiyaman - as well as the civil war-torn Syria’s northwestern areas. 

The tremors killed more than 8,000 people, wounding tens of thousands across southeastern and Mediterranean regions of Türkiye and leading to the collapse of thousands of buildings. The two quakes also killed thousands across northwestern Syria and wounded many more. 

Now Akkus and his family are staying with their relatives in a village outside Elbistan. 

The town of Elbistan is still reeling from aftershocks. Just about 20 minutes before Akkus spoke to TRT World on Tuesday evening, he had experienced another aftershock. Such was their impact that he saw the ceiling lamps at his relative's house swinging like a pendulum, he said. 

According to Akkus, one-third of buildings in Elbistan have collapsed. Bad winter conditions and the scale of damaged buildings and road networks have made search and rescue operations difficult, slowing them down. 

The Turkish government has sent tens of thousands of AFAD (Disaster and Emergency Management Agency) personnel to the affected areas. More than 40 countries have also sent their rescue teams to extract survivors from debris. 

Kadri Sahin, another native of Elbistan, who is a retired lecturer, is unable to trace his son. 

Sahin, his wife and their two kids ran out of their house after the first quake, taking shelter at their relative's house, which is earthquake resistant. 

“While we were having a meal at our relative’s house, my son went inside our damaged house. After nearly 20 minutes of his departure, the second earthquake came,” 63-year-old Sahin tells TRT World. 

His house could not withstand the second tremor. It was reduced to rubble along with the neighbouring houses. Since then, Sahin is unable to trace his 34-year-old son. He believes his son is trapped under the rubble. 

A rescue team from AFAD has already inspected the site but they are yet to see any sign of Sahin's son. 

Seref Kocakaya, a 65-year-old public employee from Kahramanmaras in Adana, one of Türkiye’s major cities that experienced a deadly earthquake in 1998, described the tremors with similar details as Akkus did.

 “Tak, tak, tak… It sounded like a drill machine cutting through the concrete,” Kocakaya tells TRT World.

During the first early morning tremor,  Kocakaya and his family made it out alive. Their one-story house remained intact despite the second earthquake and aftershocks. 

He's however mourning the loss of several relatives, who lived in a 14-floor apartment building. Despite large-scale rescue operations, no one trapped under the building rubble survived, he says.

“We saw how quakes make trees touch the ground and stand up again like they were kneeling. It also jolted us from one end of the room to another,” he says. The Kocakaya family are survivors of the 1998 Adana earthquake. 

There were some other survivor stories from Adana. “A child, who was at a toilet during the earthquake, hollered at his mom asking her to run away from home. He ran after her without his pants on,” explains Kocakaya. 

It was the great presence of mind shown by the child that helped them survive the disaster. 

The damage in Antakya

Monday's quakes also hit an ancient Mediterranean town, Antakya (Antioch), which is the central district of Türkiye’s Hatay province. 

Jozef Naseh, a 70-year-old native of Antakya, is one of the survivors.  

“I waited for the earthquake to end at home. We did not panic and continued to stay in our beds. After the earthquake calmed, we got out,” says Naseh, an archaeologist and the former head of the Antakya Christian Greek Orthodox Church Congregation Foundation. 

His house did not collapse despite having some cracks after the quakes. But the two neighbouring apartment buildings next to Naseh’s house collapsed, he adds. Thankfully, rescue teams were able to save everyone from those buildings, he says. 

He underlines that while both the government and foreign rescue teams are trying to reach survivors, it is not an easy process to save everyone due to the quakes’ magnitude and their extensive nature across southeastern and Mediterranean regions of Türkiye. 

“After such a huge earthquake, which closed roads, you can’t expect aid to reach people on short notice,” he says, also pointing out difficult weather conditions. He finds aid efforts responding to the quakes at an adequate level. 

Despite massive aid efforts, there is much suffering across the city as people mourn the losses of their loved ones, he says. He believes that the government could find ways to give a healing touch to depressed people. 

The jolts left Naseh’s Orthodox church severely damaged.

“Our community rebuilt the church after the 1872 earthquake, which also led to a large destruction across Antakya, destroying our church at the time,” Naseh tells TRT World. 

The city’s Protestant church also collapsed after Monday’s quakes, he adds. 

“It’s difficult for historical buildings to survive in the face of such powerful earthquakes. I hope our church will be rebuilt and opened to worship after we are able to pass these difficult moments,” says Naseh. 

Besides churches, the city faced large destruction. Almost no building is left without damage. “We have turned into a ghost town. We are at a point where no word can explain our situation,” says Mustafa Ozturk, a school director in Antakya. 

“We have not faced such a disaster until now,” he tells TRT World. 

Monday’s tremors, considered one of the biggest across the world, were the strongest ever to hit Türkiye since the 1939 earthquake, which killed more than 30, 000 people in Erzincan. The 1939 earthquake also happened during the winter time.