Jesse Ramdeo

A mas­sive 7.8 pre-dawn earth­quake rocked the south-east re­gion of Turkey yes­ter­day, top­pling homes and build­ings and tak­ing over 4,000 lives across both Turkey and parts of Syr­ia. Provinces in and around the epi­cen­tre of Gaziantep were al­most com­plete­ly dev­as­tat­ed. Luck­i­ly, Trinida­di­an na­tion­als liv­ing there seemed to have been liv­ing away from the dis­as­ter zone, ac­cord­ing to checks done by the Min­istry of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs.

Re­ports have sug­gest­ed that in ad­di­tion to the ris­ing death toll, the num­ber of in­jured and miss­ing peo­ple is like­ly to al­so keep climb­ing in the com­ing days.

In Is­tan­bul, over 1,000 kilo­me­tres away from where the tremors were felt, Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al Fiona Ali and her hus­band of near­ly eight years, Mo­hammed Al Hashe­mi, re­mained glued to their tele­vi­sion set and hand-held de­vices for up­dates on the earth­quake.

Dur­ing a Zoom in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Al Hashe­mi gave an ac­count of the car­nage that had en­sued fol­low­ing the earth­quake.

He said, “The earth­quake hap­pened down south along one of the tec­ton­ic plates next to the Syr­i­an bor­der and 10 cities are lo­cat­ed along that plate. It hap­pened around 4.17 am and ever since, all those cities have been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing af­ter­shocks, and the af­ter­shocks have been con­tin­u­ing.

“It is re­al­ly re­al­ly bad, some of the cities are ac­tu­al­ly wiped out, that is how bad the sit­u­a­tion is, it some­thing I nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore per­son­al­ly and I’m sure no one in Trinidad ex­pe­ri­ence that be­fore.”

Al Hashe­mi said pri­or to yes­ter­day’s earth­quake, the coun­try had been grap­pling with se­vere weath­er con­di­tions and that res­cuers were now forced to comb through mounds of rub­ble in rain and freez­ing tem­per­a­tures.

“Turkey has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing harsh weath­er through­out the coun­try, snow and rain, even here in Is­tan­bul it is bad. The gov­ern­ment on Fri­day an­nounced that to­day (Mon­day) is a day off for schools and some of the pub­lic sec­tor work­ers. Look­ing at the cur­rent weath­er con­di­tion, you can imag­ine the frus­tra­tion that is go­ing on down south with the weath­er and snow. The gov­ern­ment, af­ter an­nounc­ing a state of emer­gency, they asked the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty for sup­port and as­sis­tance. The army has been de­ployed to the af­fect­ed cities and there are al­so ded­i­cat­ing emer­gency num­bers to in­di­vid­u­als stuck and help evac­u­ate them and get them back to safe­ty.”

For both Al Hashe­mi and Ali, the mag­ni­tude of the cat­a­stro­phe was unimag­in­able.

“It is a huge loss of life, it is ter­ri­ble. We are hear­ing all these sto­ries and with so­cial me­dia, you’re liv­ing the sit­u­a­tion , the biggest earth­quake that hap­pened in Turkey was in 1999 in the city of Izmit, that de­mol­ished the whole city, that was the biggest earth­quake that hap­pened to Turkey back then but this one is 6 times big­ger than that,” Al Hashe­mi.

The cou­ple main­tained, how­ev­er, that de­spite the bleak out­look, they were not pre­pared to turn their backs on the coun­try.

“We’re not think­ing about mov­ing back to Trinidad at the mo­ment. For us, Turkey has been very wel­com­ing. Those sit­u­a­tions like this, emer­gency sit­u­a­tions, it’s some­thing we need to stand to­geth­er with the Turk­ish peo­ple and help them and sup­port them.”

Al­so con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne said this coun­try stood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Turkey and Syr­ia and that there were no re­ports of na­tion­als be­ing in­jured or killed as a re­sult of the earth­quake.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was sad­dened by the dev­as­tat­ing loss of lives in Turkey and Syr­ia fol­low­ing the earth­quakes that struck both coun­tries.

“Many Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans have an an­ces­tral bond with both Syr­ia and Turkey and may have rel­a­tives af­fect­ed by this tragedy. I wish to ex­press my love, sym­pa­thy and sup­port to our Turk­ish and Syr­i­an com­mu­ni­ties in this time of cri­sis. My deep­est con­do­lences to those who have lost loved ones in this dis­as­ter. I hope that the sur­vivors are found quick­ly and wish them a speedy re­cov­ery,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in a re­lease.