SPOKANE, Wash. — A pre-dawn earthquake devastated southern Turkey and northwest Syria Monday, leaving buildings leveled and thousands dead.
Search and rescue efforts continued into the night as the death toll rose to more than 3,400 people.
"I heard from my sister-in-law that a lot of buildings collapsed," says Rezvan Mohammadi, who has family and friends in Turkey.
Mohammadi now lives in Spokane and works with refugees at World Relief, but she spent nine years in Turkey as a refugee herself.
Like so many of the people she knows in the Spokane area, who are awaiting word from loved ones back home.
"When I woke up in the morning, I heard a lot, I received a lot of messages that they're worried about their family in Turkey," Mohammadi says. "They're from Syria, Afghan, Iranian. They're really worried."
As she comforts those concerns, she's living with an agonizing wait of her own.
"Feel really bad that maybe something happened to them that they cannot answer me, because when I send messages to them they answer me really quick," Mohammadi says of friends from her university, women she thinks of as 'sisters.' "I don't even want to think maybe something happened to them."
Her family fled to Turkey in 2011, the same year a similar disaster hit the country.
"I had a really, really bad experience of earthquake because me and my family members lived in a tent for three months," she recalls. "I can't even explain it to you."
It's a devastating situation she knows many are living through right now, with thousands of Syrian refugees living in Turkey after fleeing from war in the neighboring country. Frigid temperatures are also adding to the desperation of trying to find shelter and survivors.
"When you don't have heating machines it is really hard. You cannot imagine," Mohammadi says. "And now I feel very, very bad for the people of Turkey. Yes, I'm not from Turkey but I didn't see my country, it's like my home country. I feel very bad for my people, I can say my people."
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