The small gray house of Mahir Karatas, once detached from a road, gave way several meters after the earthquake that devastated Turkey and Syria opened a fault in the ground of the village of Demirkopru, which was divided in two.
“Here the ground gave way four meters”, says a farmer whose house seems almost intact, despite being lower than usual.
The work to rescue the victims was concentrated in Antakya, capital of the province of Hatay, heavily devastated by the tremors.
20 kilometers away, in Demirkopru, half a dozen nearby buildings were badly damaged, but the small town had no fatalities.
During the earthquake that caused the death of more than 44,000 people, “the ground gave way and, soon after, it rose again”, says Karatas.
A huge ditch opened, leaving the region flooded. The asphalt road was also damaged, leaving some sections one meter above the others.
“It turned into an island (where the water level) went up and down,” says Murat Yar.
“The ground slid thirty meters towards the river. It was possible to see water and sand flowing”, continues the carpenter.
Many residents of the region managed to “jump out the windows of their houses of one or two floors”, going to places considered safe by the Turkish authorities, which left only a few injured and no fatalities, a completely opposite situation of Antakya, where the buildings collapsed with the tremors.
The carpenter describes that he saw “a ten meter geyser” appear during the earthquake, near the school, whose façade, however, was not damaged.
In the courtyard in front of the site, a zigzag-shaped gap was formed in the facade and the portal moved about 20 meters away from the original location.
A little further away, four prefab buildings from another school look like dominoes scattered across uneven terrain.
“At the time of the earthquake I said to myself, ‘We’re dead,’” says Yar, for whom this incident was “a million times worse” than the 1999 incident, which left 17,000 dead.
There have been other earthquakes in the past, but they were mild,” says Hatice Sahan. “This time we were very afraid. We entrust our lives to God,” she emphasizes.
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