Turkey earthquake: How Nigerian man luckily escaped with wife and children
A Nigerian man based in Turkey is lucky to have survived the deadly earthquake alongside his family.
Emmanuel Olaitan Johnson recounted how he escaped the earthquake that has killed more than 5,000 people in Turkey and Syria, with death toll increasing every minute.
Johnson, who spoke with BBC Pidgin, explained that he sensed danger when he noticed the crack in his building wall.
Recounting his ordeal, Jonhson said he was dressed only in pants, picked up his children and dashed into the snow without any piece of clothing.
“I was in my building and I noticed it was shaking but I wasn’t perturbed at first. But when I saw a crack in the wall, I grabbed my wife and children and ran out of the house.
“As I speak to you, I and my family are now homeless,” he told BBC Pidgin.
Johnson, a Nigerian living in Gaziantep, one of the affected cities in Turkey, explained that he had just finished watching the 9/11 terrorist attack documentary before the incident began.
According to Jonhson, before my house broke down, I ran inside twice to pick shoes for myself, wife and children and also pick up our documents.
He added that the incident began around 4:17 am in the morning.
According to him, we are dressed in singlets and boxers and his children were walking in the snow with barefoot.
“While I was using my building’s staircase, I almost lost my footing while climbing because of the earthquake’s magnitude and how the building was shaking,” he said.
For safety, he claimed that some people sheltered in sports centres and museums with strong buildings.
The magnitude 7.8 quake brought down whole apartment blocks in Turkish cities and piled more devastation on millions of Syrians displaced by years of war.
The worst tremor to strike Turkey this century came before sunrise in harsh weather and was followed in the early afternoon by another large quake of magnitude 7.7.
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