Turkey-based Kahramanmaraş, which took place in the same region on February 06, 2023 in just 9 hours; It was deeply shaken by two large earthquakes, one with a magnitude of 7.8 and the other with a magnitude of 7.6. It is 500 km long, 100 km long, stretching from Hatay to Diyarbakır, from Adana to Kahramanmaraş, Malatya and Elazığ. There was extensive damage in a deep area. In the last hundred years, one of the biggest destructions on land after an earthquake has taken place in the world.
More than 80 thousand buildings in the region were directly destroyed, nearly 200 thousand buildings became uninhabitable. We lost nearly 45 thousand citizens. We pulled out more than 120 thousand of our citizens with injuries, and it is estimated that at least 50 thousand of our citizens are still missing. Nearly 3 million of our citizens became homeless or had to leave their homes. 14 million of our people in the region were directly affected by the earthquakes.
Like every Turkish citizen, we could not stand still in Istanbul while the lives were burning there. I decided to go to Malatya to contribute to the region with my warehouse management and management experience that I gave my whole career. Before we went to Malatya, we organized a warehouse of 2.000 m2.
Me, my wife and our friend arrived in Malatya on 10 February after traveling for almost a day in order to facilitate the storage and distribution of relief materials. After installing the system and establishing the infrastructures in the warehouse we commissioned, we handed it over to the Yeşilyurt District Governorate on February 15 and left the region. During this time, we also provided support to different warehouses for receiving, sorting and preparing for distribution.
I would like to share with you what we went through in 5 days, my experiences, what I saw, my observations, impressions and suggestions.
Click here to read the report.
