Saturday, August 21, 1999
Middletown teen-ager recounts earthquake terror
Sisters in apartment as quake hit Istanbul
BY JANET C. WETZEL
The Cincinnati Enquirer
MIDDLETOWN — Zeren and Zeynep Argic were sipping Turkish tea and laughing about their vacation Tuesday when the dark liquid in their cups began to tremble.
Seconds later, everything in the fifth floor of a 14-story apartment in Istanbul, Turkey, began an eerie, slow-motion dance. Pictures on the wall, knickknacks on the shelves and dishes in the cabinets trembled.
Abruptly things turned violent. Walls, ceilings and floors cracked as the Middletown residents, who were born in Turkey, watched in stunned silence.
Those were the memories of the last few hours of a vacation that began Aug. 3 for sisters Zeren, 15, a sophomore at Middletown High School, and Zeynep, 20, a junior at Ohio State University.
Zeren described the ordeal Friday.
They were awake — sitting up all night, talking to friends, so they could sleep on the 12-hour flight home. The nightmare began as they sat in the friend's apartment in Istanbul, about 100 miles from Izmit, the quake epicenter.
“We thought the building was just going to tumble down,” Zeren recalled, her voice trembling with emotion. “It just lasted 45 seconds, but it felt like forever. It just wouldn't stop. It was the longest 45 seconds of my life.”
The quake, which struck near dawn Aug. 17, has taken the lives of an estimated 10,000, injured nearly 34,000 and left tens of thousands homeless, according to reports.
The sisters, daughters of Ilknur and Mehmet Argic, who brought their family here in 1989, have lasting memories of their usually annual trips to Turkey, but none such as this, Zeren said.
After the earthquake ended, the family friend told everyone to grab necessities and warm clothing and get out of the building. As they fled down the stairs, all the lights in Istanbul went out. They stepped out into inky blackness.
“We stayed all night by their (friends') house, on a bank along the Black Sea,” because the buildings were unsafe, Zeren said. “There were a lot of aftershocks. A Turkish newspaper said there were about 100 in an hour. It was horrible.”
En route to the airport later that morning, Zeren said there was widespread devastation — buildings leveled or jarred from their foundations and huge boulders that had tumbled from hillsides.
“We were lucky to survive,” she said. “I don't think I'll go back to Turkey for a while. And that's a shame. It's just the best place in the world. It's just beautiful.”
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