After a catastrophic earthquake struck Turkey and Syria early Monday morning, a Lakota East alumnus and her husband struggle to re-connect with family who fled their home with just the clothes on their backs.
“I just can’t imagine 4:15 in the morning, you’re dead asleep in the middle of the night and you evacuate in your pajamas, do you remember to put on shoes? Do you think about that when you’re trying to just get out as quickly as possible?” said Lindsey Scott.
Turkish and Syrian officials continue to update the death toll from the earthquake: As of Friday morning, nearly 22,000 people are dead, about 18,000 of which are from Turkey.
The death toll now surpasses the death toll from the 1999 earthquake that killed more than 17,000 people in Turkey, making it the 6th deadliest earthquake in the last 20 years.
“You can hear their voices and they’re just trapped and you just know that they’re not going to come out,” Scott said.
Scott, a Lakota East grad living in Istanbul, said the entire country is in mourning.
Scott fell in love with Turkey during a program in college through The Ohio State University. She returned right after she graduated and has been living there for about 13 years.
It's also where Scott fell in love with her husband, Sinan Başbuğa. The couple lives about 12 hours, or 700 miles, from the epicenter in Turkey’s Gaziantep province along the Turkey-Syria border.
The pair said they didn’t feel the earthquake, but they are glued to the coverage online as many of the miracle rescue missions instead become recovery missions.
After the earthquake, moments of intense fear set in quickly because Başbuğa's parents and 4 siblings live in Diyakbakir. Their home was about 200 miles or 4 hours from the epicenter, a similar distance as Cincinnati is from Cleveland.
Scott and Başbuğa said their family narrowly escaped tragedy.
“So far my family, all of them are safe,” Başbuğa said. “They got out of the earthquake on the night. Of course, they were afraid, but after the earthquake stopped, they got out of the building and thankfully they are all healthy, they are alive.”
His family is left with just the clothes on their back.
Başbuğa said he’s glad his family left their 8-story building when they did because a second earthquake destroyed the supports and they’ll never be able to return.
They’re now staying with an aunt while family and friends help them get back on their feet. But Başbuğa reiterates that even though his family lost everything, it is very little compared to those who lost their entire families.
Başbuğa and Scott, both school teachers, are off this week as the country is in mourning.
But Scott said she feels helpless because Turkish officials have restricted access to the hardest hit cities, making it impossible to reunite with family and help others.
“It’s so devastating because you know that every hour that passes it just means that more and more people are not going to make it out and it’s just, it’s horrible,” Scott said.
Scott and Başbuğa agree that one of the hardest parts now is not knowing which buildings are safe.
“I think the scariest part of it is that you don’t have that reassurance that where you’re going is safe,” Scott said. “You see the buildings that have even been built in the last 5 years that were coded and said they’re earthquake safe and all of this and they just toppled, toppled to the ground, they just were completely destroyed.”
Scott's family still lives in the West Chester area and she comes back once or twice a year.
She sent a text to dad that they were safe, knowing he would see the devastation on the news when he woke up.
Scott says her mom’s friends and co-workers immediately started asking how about her and what they could do to help.
“It’s been really amazing the people back home,” Scott said .
Scott and her friend worked to set up a GoFundMe to help families like her husbands get back on their feet.
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