People throughout the Bay Area are organizing to help earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria. As search and recovery efforts intensify, the death toll is now closing in on 8,000.
It's a crisis within a crisis, as rescue teams search for survivors in the midst of a war.
“What’s so devastating about this disaster is that so many people who have been affected were already displaced by the Syrian Civil War,” said Kerri Murray, president of ShelterBox.
That’s why organizations like ShelterBox and several others throughout the Bay Area are moving faster than ever.
Get a weekly recap of the latest San Francisco Bay Area housing news. Sign up for NBC Bay Area’s Housing Deconstructed newsletter.
Packing donations, sending money, and activating emergency response teams with volunteers from around the globe, including California.
“We’re seeing a lot of images coming out of Turkey, there's a lot of humanitarian responders that are making their way there, because Syria is a much more complex place to work, fewer humanitarian actors actively working there like ShelterBox,” said Murray.
The first team of volunteers is already en route to Syria, where they estimate hundreds of thousands of people need help.
In Turkey, the scenes of destruction are difficult to see.
Especially for those who’ve been fighting for years to help underprivileged children there, like Bay Area resident Nurdan Civi.
“The images are just devastating, the kids getting out of concrete blocks and every minute their chance of getting rescued alive is getting slimmer,” said Civi.
She’s the organizer of a Turkish band called “Songs of the Future."
Their music events raise funds to send girls to school in Turkey. But on Tuesday, she and her husband are sending money to family members who’ve been displaced.
And her band is gearing up for a much bigger project.
“They lost their homes, they lost hospitals, they lost everything, they lost schools so maybe we will dedicate our efforts to build new school for these kids,” said Civi.
Their next event has been pushed back until May, but she says they’ll keep working in other ways, to raise money for devastated families in Turkey.
