A South Bay man who was in Turkey when the deadly 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck early Monday morning is now trying to get his family members out of one of the hardest hit areas.
Omer Artun, who lives in Los Gatos, was in Istanbul Monday, about to fly south to Antakya to see his family members, when the quake hit.
"I was going to fly on Sunday, but then I had a doctor’s appointment, so I said, ‘I’ll go on Monday,'" Artun said.
Artun has 25 family members who are now displaced. Most were injured and some distant family members are presumed dead.
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"The number of cities that are affected and the number of people that are affected and the degree that they are affected is just unthinkable," Artun said.
The purpose of Artun's original trip was to see his 83-year-old aunt who is recovering from cancer.
Early Monday, Artun said she was on the top floor of a six-story building when the quake struck. The bottom two floors collapsed and Artun's aunt was trapped in an apartment that was leaning on the building next door.
"She got saved after 10 hours," Artun said. "Part of the wall collapsed on her and she broke her hip. Now she’s in the hospital."
She's in good spirits, but others are not as upbeat.
"The situation is incredibly bad," Artun said. "They’re all still in shock."
Artun is a consultant and owns the Meyhouse restaurants in Sunnyvale and Palo Alto.
He'll be staying in Turkey a few more weeks to help, but even that is proving challenging because he can't travel to the region where his family lives.
"The whole path to go down there, there’s a lot of snow right now," he said. "The road conditions are terrible. And they’re also restricting civilians' path into the city with cars."
But he'll continue sending funds and working to move them to safety.
"They don’t have money, they don’t have access to anything," Artun said. "I’m trying to coordinate medical help, them staying in a hospital and then some of them are staying in hotels and so forth outside of the affected region."
