Delft steps into action after major earthquake

Delft steps into action after major earthquake

The massive earthquake in Turkey and Syria has killed thousands of people. Local universities and students are ceasing teaching and collecting resources. Students in the Netherlands are busy too.

More than five thousand people are already known to have died in eastern Turkey and northern Syria following the worst earthquake in decades, Monday morning. The United Nations estimates that the death toll will rise to more than twenty thousand. Many people are still missing. Students and teachers have also been affected: seventy are trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings, some are also injured or still missing.

Students in the Netherlands
Much international support has been promised from universities and student associations. For example, the Turkish student association SV Anatolia from Amsterdam is going to raise money. “Everyone is working on it,” chairman Safa Yilmaz told Het Parool. “It is alive, people Whatsapp each other: is your family okay? Even a few of our board members have family in the area.”

In Delft, CDA member Yavuz Özkuzugüdenli and his two cousins are collecting goods and money for the victims. The tally of their online fundraising campaign now stands at over seventy thousand euros and the first trucks with goods have left for Turkey and Syria. Due to the large response, the three have temporarily halted the collection of goods. “Now we are urgently looking for moving boxes and manpower to sort and prepare all the goods for transport,” says Özkuzugüdenli.

TU Delft students and staff who want to help out can donate moving boxes at the two collection locations in The Hague (Televisiestraat 334 or Kempstraat 126). Anyone wishing to help sort may spontaneously report to one of the locations and ask for Cenko or Harun Özkuzugüdenli.

(HOP, PvT / Delta, MvdV)