Kubilay Ozturk was 14 years old when an earthquake of 7.3 magnitudes devastated Turkey’s industrial heartland in 1999. “Though young, I helped the rescuers in Golcuk, where I lived. When I was older, I trained as one with Turkey’s disaster agency AFAD,” the forklift operator told Al-Monitor. 

When he woke up in the early hours of Monday to the news that a 7.8 magnitude earthquake had occurred in his hometown of Elbistan, a district of the southern province of Kahramanmaras, he simply got in his car and drove 930 kilometers (577 miles) across Turkey to reach his family, who lived there. He reached his family home just when a second earthquake of 7.6 magnitudes centered in Kahramanmaras’ Elbistan district rocked the region. 

“Miraculously, my family was not hurt,” he said, sputtering with fear that his battery would die before he finished what he wanted to say. “But our whole neighborhood is filled with collapsed buildings. I am a trained rescuer who has helped in many earthquakes, but I have no equipment, and there are no rescue teams I can join here, so I am sitting in my car in the cold, waiting.” 

A few hours later, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced in a televised address that the 10 provinces devastated by twin earthquakes and hundreds of aftershocks would be placed under a state of emergency for three months. Claiming the state of emergency would ensure that the rescue operations would be carried out swiftly, the president said that 100 billion Turkish liras ($5.3 billion) would be allocated to the region.