The Turkish woman who survived the disaster, Aslihan Kavas Oglu, has spent the past six days with her family inside a small building in a garden in the Turkish city of Antioch, mourning the loved ones she lost.
“I lost two of my sisters, my brother and my mother in the earthquake,” she told Reuters. “Most of my family members died. They saved us from here. We have nowhere to go. I don’t know how we will get out of here.”
Aslihan, her husband and their three children fled their home and reached the park shortly after the earthquake struck early Monday morning and have been there ever since.
They found a safe place in a small one-storey building where they live alongside some other families.
The family sleeps on the ground and relies on food and water brought by aid workers to the park, where more than 500 people live in tents and bungalows.
It seems that the garden was still under construction when the earthquake and its aftershocks occurred, but it has now become a haven for those displaced by the earthquake.
However, life in the garden is difficult, as there are piles of rubbish in the children’s playground, and foul smells and thick smoke are emitted from the fires that families light all day to keep warm.
The entrance to the park is littered with cans of food and water bottles, along with clothes donated by people from all over the country.
The building where Aslihan and her husband live is still standing, but they say they feel unsafe entering it even though they have nowhere else to go.
Volunteer chefs, some from other cities, began distributing pasta and tomato sauce meals to camp families on Saturday evening.
“God bless them,” Aslihan said. “They give us food and other aid.”
But she added that the general hygiene situation is very poor, as people defecate in the streets and there are no toilets.
“It smells bad everywhere, we can’t sleep at night because of the smell,” she said.
She added that she wanted to move to the capital, Ankara, where someone they knew told them that he had found a job and an apartment there.
Her husband, Taha, a cleaner working in the city of Antioch, said he did not want to leave his hometown but would do what was right for his family.
“We thought at first that only a few buildings collapsed. We saw the truth of the matter in the morning, but we did not receive help until three days later,” Taha said.
He added, “Nobody wants to leave their hometown, I don’t want to leave my hometown but I will do it for the sake of my family.”
