B.C. woman shares grief, concerns upon return from Turkey quake zone
Global News
Nural Sumbultepe lost 10 relatives in the quake, including six immediate family members.
A British Columbia woman who lost nearly a dozen family members in the devastating earthquake in Turkey has returned to Vancouver after a trip to her hometown, and said the region remains desperately in need of help.
Nural Sumbultepe lost 10 relatives in the quake, including six immediate family members.
“Six very dear to my heart that I see all the time when I go home and that I communicate with almost on a weekly basis from Canada,” she said.
“Who am I going to mourn today? Every day I think about one of them in detail.”
Sumbultepe returned to Canada from the city of Iskenderun, which was devastated by the disaster, on Wednesday.
While in Turkey, she toured the devastation, visited military sites and provided as much aid as she was able to her family, and anyone else she could help.
“I literally collapsed — my legs did not hold me — when I saw the destruction,” she said, adding that she was on the ground for another terrifying earthquake while in the country.
“I had to visit a lot of graves, as you can imagine, and I supported my sister who lost very close immediate family members and my niece who needed help with her two kids … I visited a lot of what we call tent cities, where people were living in containers and tents.”