THE pictures and footage are nothing short of gut-wrenching. The grief of people robbed of loved ones, the desperation of rescue workers searching through rubble, the bewilderment of families living in makeshift camps after being ripped from their homes – the litany goes on and on.
More than 46 000 people lost their lives when two earthquakes struck a vast region of Türkiye and Syria on the freezing morning of 6 February, destroying cities and towns and affecting millions of people already reeling from the effects of war and an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis.
South Africans have also been affected by the disaster – some are survivors living in Türkiye, others are rescue workers who went to help in the aftermath of the disaster.
YOU spoke to some of them who gave harrowing first-hand accounts of the hell that descended on the area.
MICHELLE ARSLAN
SOUTH AFRICAN LIVING IN TÜRKIYE
The family’s apartment building in Kahramanmaraş – a city near the epicentre of the quake – started shaking at 4.15am. Michelle, an English teacher originally from Worcester in the Western Cape who’s
