New Turkey earthquake a ‘sign of the apocalypse’

Antakya — Havva Tuncay was living in a tent set up in the centre of the Turkish city of Antakya when another earthquake hit on Monday night. She had been having trouble sleeping after the first shocks left Havva and her children homeless two weeks ago. 

“I cannot sleep at night. Is the same thing going to happen, are we going to experience another earthquake? We are very scared. I haven’t slept for a week," she said outside her tent.

Minutes later the ground began to heave beneath her feet, toppling the stove stack on which a teapot stood boiling.

The night sky lit up with sparks in the distance, reflecting off the clouds covering the sky above Antakya as the ground shook. The heavily damaged buildings surrounding the park — the few that remained upright after the earthquakes two weeks earlier — rumbled violently, as more of their facades fell off.

Dust rose from the ground with the crash of concrete and bricks, blanketing the sky and hindering visibility. Some buildings around the park continued to creak minutes after the earthquake.

Yelling, crashing sounds and cries of “God is greatest” resonated through the camp in a central park as panic took hold, with people running out of their tents, some without shoes.

Some grabbed hold of their children and partners and sat huddled together, some ran around helplessly. Others were violently thrown to the ground.

Havva, a single mother of three, first ran away from her tent, yelling and wailing. She collapsed on the ground, almost fainting. The fear that kept her awake at night for two weeks had now come true.

Havva’s 18-year-old son, Mehmet Uslu, and other residents ran to her, trying to console her. “My heart is pounding," she said. Phone in one hand, Mehmet put his siblings on speakerphone, his other arm around his mother’s shoulder.

Aid workers who ran through the park monitoring people told her to sit down, calm down and have a sip of water. But Havva was focused on checking in on her daughters, who were staying with their grandmother at a nearby village for the night so that they could shower.

Mehmet told his siblings on the phone not to go inside any buildings. “There was an earthquake, we went outside,” one responded, adding that power had gone out. “We didn’t shake too much, don’t be scared,” she said.

Havva promised that they would leave town and go to Edirne, on the northwestern border of Turkey about 1,350km away.

“I will pick you up and we will leave,” Havva told her daughter. “Where will we go? Will there not be an earthquake there? There will be one there too,” she responded.

On Tuesday, Reuters saw Havva with Mehmet and her two daughters just outside Antakya city centre, boarding a bus that would take them to Edirne free of charge.

Murat Vural, a blacksmith, who was at the camp on Monday night, likened the earthquake to religious stories about Antakya. “To me this is one of the signs of the apocalypse. I felt that we were going to die, that we would be buried here.”

He called his friend shortly after the earthquake on Monday to tell him they should leave town as well.

“This is no longer a place we can remain,” he said. “We are mostly worried for our lives. Death is a salvation for everyone but living is nice too.”

Reuters