Close Shave: NET TV Crew Leaves Southern Turkish Town A Few Hours Before Earthquake Hits
A NET TV crew, along with volunteers, had a close shave yesterday, leaving the Turkish town of Antakya some four hours before an earthquake struck.
The crew had just finished shooting footage of a documentary about the 6th February earthquake and was heading westwards en route back to Malta when a second quake hit.
“At first we were scared but felt lucky, although from a journalistic point of view I wished I was there to document it,” NET TV journalist Simon Vella Gregory told Lovin Malta.
“Our hotel in Antakya which we left yesterday morning has been evacuated because it was severely damaged.”
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It was only through sheer chance that the crew avoided the earthquake.
Vella Gregory said their original plan was to stay in Antakya until Monday evening but left in the morning after obtaining the footage they needed earlier than expected.
Cracks in the Antakya hotel where the crew was staying at
The crew – Vella Gregory, cameraperson Noel Zammit, SOS Malta’s David Grech and volunteers Zaidan Taleb and Charles Borg – were in Adana, some two hours away by car from Antakya, when the earthquake hit.
He said the earthquake was quite strong in Adana too and that the hotel the crew was staying at was “literally swaying”.
However, they managed to return to Malta safe and sound, and Foreign Affairs Minister Ian Borg said he had asked Malta’s ambassador to Turkey and its Consul General in Istanbul to provide them with assistance.
The crew’s experiences in southern Turkey will be aired in a documentary that will be published on NET TV next week.
“I felt sad but angry,” Vella Gregory said of his experience. “Although these people are being helped, they need much much more. Children have nothing to eat.”
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A powerful 6.4-magnitude earthquake and a second measuring 5.8 hit Turkey’s southern province of Hatay yesterday, a few weeks after two consecutive earthquakes left more than 40,000 dead.
At least three people were killed and 213 injured in the latest quakes, which were also felt in neighbouring Syria. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that over 500 people in the north-west of the country suffered injuries.
Cover photo: Left: NET TV journalist Simon Vella Gregory reporting from Antakya, Right: Cracks in the walls of the Antakya hotel where the NET journalists were staying at
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