Tag: Turkey-Syria Earthquake

Jindires, northwest Syria – On the night of February 5, people across northwest Syria stayed up all night, till 4:30am, before they could close their eyes and sleep, reassured that the anniversary of last year’s earthquakes had passed without somehow triggering another devastating quake.

The caution was not based on a scientific warning but rather a fear that the disaster that killed and injured thousands of people and continues to displace tens of thousands more would somehow recur.

From the north of Aleppo province to western and southern Idlib, the effects of the earthquakes are still visible in cracked buildings and camps filled with tents of the people who lost their homes amid war, poverty and declining humanitarian aid.

Only the rubble has been cleared from the streets.

Jindires, one year on

Early in the morning on February 6, people began to gather in a gallery on the outskirts of Jindires, one of the worst-hit areas, among them were many members of the White Helmets, otherwise known as Syria Civil Defence, who had worked tirelessly to rescue people from the earthquakes’ destruction.

They were there to mark the first anniversary of the earthquakes with a public event and exhibition.

They spoke to the press about what the earthquakes did to an area whose infrastructure was already decimated by years of war and where a severe shortage of emergency equipment had hampered the emergency response.

“There was a lack of machinery, and there were no international teams or immediate aid to help us respond to the disaster,” White Helmets media official Hamid Qatini told Al Jazeera.

Even though they deployed all their available equipment, they still did not have enough to cover the widespread destruction, Qatini added. The long delay in getting any aid into northwest Syria caused even more hardship to an already traumatised population.

Images of loss

As soon as Fatima Hamoudi entered the exhibition, her tears began to flow. The 50-year-old woman lost her son, Muhammad, his wife and his daughter during the earthquakes. His five-year-old son, also named Muhammad, was the only survivor.

“I knew that I had lost him as soon as I heard about the earthquake,” said Hamoudi, who had been in Turkey at the time and had talked to her son on the phone the previous evening.

As soon as she heard about the quake, she tried in vain to communicate with the family.

“He was under the rubble for a whole day,” Hamoudi said, noting that she was unable to say goodbye to him and that it took six months for her to return to Syria, where she lives today, to take care of her grandson.

Hamoudi toured the exhibition, looking sadly at the images of the destruction.

Next to paintings representing the work of the White Helmets stood the painter, Gulstan Bouzou, who said her paintings express gratitude.

“I tried to add hope in my drawings,” she said.

She had been in nearby Afrin city when the quakes hit, and over the past months, she has used her art to help those affected and has taught drawing and music to children orphaned in the disaster.

“We’re still working on starting other educational projects during the coming months,” Bouzou said.

“I want to revive hope and tell survivors that overcoming disaster is possible.”

Murals on destroyed walls

About an hour’s drive away from Jindires, in Maland, west of Idlib, there are also artistic commemorations of what hit the region a year ago.

But here, the colours are splashed onto the damaged walls that remain standing, perhaps as a message of hope.

“The earthquake left a huge trauma,” graffiti artist Salam al-Hamed told Al Jazeera. “We haven’t forgotten what happened yet.”

Over the past few days, al-Hamed and her fellow painters in the Brush of Hope group visited several of the worst-affected cities and towns in the countryside of Idlib province.

They painted murals depicting the disaster and the White Helmets rescuing people trapped under the rubble.

“Our drawings were related to the suffering and pain of people, especially those who were stuck under the rubble and were praying for life but were buried and dead while waiting for help,” al-Hamed said, referring to more than 4,500 people killed by the earthquakes.

“Other murals are about resilience, patience and loss.”

Destruction, death and damage are things the people of the northwest, the last area in Syria controlled by opposition forces, are accustomed to after 13 years of war and continuous bombing by government forces and their ally Russia.

But the earthquakes were nothing like any other disaster experienced in Syria’s modern history, leaving shock and fear so deep that it remains with them today.

Idlib, northwest Syria – At the top of a green hill separating the Syria-Turkey border from the small village of al-Allani in the northern countryside of Idlib, Ibrahim al-Aswad stands contemplating rubble that a year ago was a two-storey home.

“We were 15 people and only six of us survived,” Ibrahim still remembers the first seconds of the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck – followed by a second, nearly as strong – southern Turkey and northwestern Syria at 4:17am on February 6, 2023.

He was woken up by the sound of his mother shouting from downstairs, telling him to leave the house. Confused, he felt around trying to find his thick glasses so he could see his way.

That delay was the reason he survived. He was unable to cross the threshold of his room before the house collapsed on everyone inside it.

“I lost my father, my mother, two of my brothers, my sister, her three children, and my daughter Ghazal,” Ibrahim told Al Jazeera.

He nearly lost his youngest son Hussein, too, he says, until the family dog Tiki helped rescue him four days after the quake.

The empty grave

Ibrahim was the first to be pulled out of under the rubble by villagers who had gathered to rescue whoever they could while connections were out and rescue and ambulance teams had not arrived yet.

The extent of the destruction the earthquake caused to the roads across the region meant that civil defence teams had a hard time reaching remote villages.

Added to that was the failure of rescue aid to enter the northwest in the first days of the earthquake, leaving villagers alone and responsible for searching and rescuing and transporting the dead, wounded and injured.

Ibrahim, who is in his 30s, was wounded in his feet and head but remained standing, trying to move the heavy stones off his family along with the rescuers.

He reached his son and wife, then found his seven-year-old daughter, Ghazal, dead.

The villagers kept working to find everyone who was under the rubble, and after a long day, nine new graves were dug in the cemetery next to the house. Eight of them were filled and the last lay empty.

“I prepared that grave for my father, Hussein, and for my son, whom I named after him and whom he loved very much,” Ibrahim said.

“I said I would bury my son in his grandfather’s arms.”

But the rescuers did not find grandfather and grandson, and after finding the bodies of everyone who was downstairs, they had no hope that either of them had survived.

On the second day, the villagers continued searching, gathered to console Ibrahim and tried to help the survivors.

The family’s dog Tiki stood near the rubble, barking non-stop and trying to attract the neighbours’ attention to one spot over and over again.

At first, they thought she was barking because of the aftershocks that had already begun but, eventually, Tiki’s insistent barking and attempts to dig in one spot prompted a neighbour to alert Ibrahim and focus their work there on the fourth day.

They expected that Tiki was trying to guide them to the bodies of the grandfather and grandson but to their surprise, young Hussein was alive in the arms of his grandfather, who died protecting him.

Ghazal

With all the loss Ibrahim suffered, one of the things he most wanted to recover from under the rubble was a pair of gold earrings he had bought as a gift for little Ghazal.

“She died before I could give them to her,” Ibrahim said, holding back tears as he explained how he had had to sell Ghazal’s earrings a while ago to raise some money, and how angry she had been with him.

“She died before she could forgive me.”

After Ibrahim’s injuries were healed, he returned to work as a day labourer, trying to adapt to his new life, and to a new routine.

Every morning, he visits his family’s graves, tells them everything that happened the day before, waters the flowers he planted near them, and reads from the Quran.

The feeling of loss is still the same for Ibrahim, and Ghazal, in particular, still accompanies his thoughts.

“I remember her every minute and second … I remember her laugh, her walk, and her actions.”

Ibrahim wanted to leave the village where he lost everything, but the graves of his loved ones prevented him.

“I can’t leave my family behind.”

Today, Ibrahim resides with his wife and two children, six-year-old Hussein and four-year-old Mahmoud, and his two younger brothers. Those who are still alive give him the motivation to continue trying to recover psychologically despite his deep sadness.

“I’m afraid of losing any of them… If one of them gets sick, I can’t eat or drink until they recover,” Ibrahim said.

The effects of the shock are still evident on Ibrahim and his family, who can no longer live inside a concrete home for fear of the aftershocks.

Standing in front of the rubble of the home, which lay unchanged for a year, Ibrahim said his family were martyrs and therefore he was able to accept what happened to them.

“Many consoled me, and their words brought reassurance to my heart. They told me a hadith about the Prophet Muhammad who said that the one killed in the ruins is a martyr.

“This is what gives me patience.”