Horror and hope remain a year after the earthquake that struck the Turkish city of Izmir

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Saturday marks the first anniversary of one of the deadliest earthquakes to hit Izmir in decades. One year ago, Turkey’s third largest province located on the Aegean coast lost 117 people to a 6.6-magnitude earthquake.

The disaster was not unusual for a country prone to devastating earthquakes, but for Izmir, it was an unprecedented disaster.

“They call it a sandy house,” says Fatma Eladag, referring to her children’s description of their former home in Bayraklı, Izmir, the region that suffered most from the earthquake whose epicenter was off the coast of Seferihisar, which was hit by a post-disaster tsunami. Al-Adagh spent four and a half hours under the rubble of their apartment, with her three children, ages 2 and 4, and her neighbour’s 8-year-old daughter. Everyone was rescued by the firefighters as they frantically cleared the rubble.

She remembers how her 4-year-old son Youssef and 6-year-old daughter Zahra could not move an inch for hours. “I was desperate. I tried to lift their spirits by singing songs together. I found a doll among the rubble and gave it to my daughter to keep her occupied. I crawled under it and found another toy to give to my son,” she told Demiroren News Agency on Friday of her working hours under the rubble.

The 36-year-old says her children are still traumatized by the accident and that they ask her which house they have visited since the earthquake if it has any “cracks”.

The family lost everything in their first floor home and moved in with relatives before finding a new home. “I am grateful to be alive. We received psychological support after the disaster but my children have not been able to sleep well since. They are still afraid when they hear bangs or loud noises. They are afraid of hearing noises from construction sites. I have never returned to the neighborhood and wanted to move Somewhere as far as possible from there.Aladag considers herself lucky to have a working cell phone and to get to the emergency teams on her first call.

“I was thinking about catching the kids and running away when we first had the tremors but I don’t remember what happened next. And our neighbor’s daughter Merv remembered it. We sat on the sofa and hugged each other and the ceiling fell on us. We were trapped between the sofa and the wardrobe but that saved us ( from death) , “

Gunay Ozyek is among the young survivors of the earthquake. The 16-year-old was also among the first to be rescued from the rubble of his apartment in a seven-story building, ten hours later. Ozicek underwent surgeries on his legs and spent two months in the hospital for treatment. He was bedridden for several months before the treatment regained his health.

He now lives with his grandmother in Izmir’s Kemalpaşa district, and the high school student says he doesn’t remember as much about the earthquake than he used to. I always thought that I would be rescued under the rubble. I had a constant fear of death before I heard the rescuers,” he told Anadolu Agency (AA) in a recent interview, “surprised” at how much time he spent under the collapsed building.

Buried under blocks of concrete, Ozyek says he has barely given up hope. “After I was rescued, I was terrified that I could never walk again. When I started walking again, I felt like a child learning how to walk. What kept me alive did not always lose hope.”

Today, most survivors live in temporary homes or have moved in with relatives. On Saturday, the first batch of state-built homes for survivors will be handed over to their owners.

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