Earthquakes in Turkey and Syria

The theme for this month is about Treasuring Life and my thoughts immediately went to the major earthquake in Turkey and Syria. As you know, it was a tragic series of massive earthquakes that struck both countries and it was so horrific that I found myself avoiding news about it. But I now feel it is my duty to remind you here of the many treasured lives lost on or after 6th February, 2023.

To me it was one of the first times I had seen so many ordinary city buildings collapse, with many fleeing residents running into the streets and the aftershock being on a similar scale to the first one. This mobile phone footage showed a tragic reality of buildings unable (or not built) to withstand such an earthquake – a building on a similar scale to the one behind me.

The current death toll for Turkey is just under 46,000 and for Syria is it is nearly 7,000. That is about 53,000 deaths which is a number far too great to comprehend. I needed to put that in a scale that I could better understand so I thought how many schools is that? The number is a shocking 79 schools the size of Shung Tak were gone. Once I knew this, I could begin to understand the scale of the tragedy, and the effect it has on families and the society in the earthquake zone.

Among this tragic loss of life there were stories of hope, courage and bravery where rescuers and ordinary people were able to dig out people and animals still alive days after the first shock. Even though the time had passed for finding anyone alive, they still found people buried within their own buildings. These rescuers did treasure life and never gave up.

But what can we all do as people living in a peaceful place far away from the collapsed buildings in Turkey and Syria? Well, firstly you can find a way of supporting the relief efforts in the earthquake region – you can respond to the call for donations and contribute, however little, to their recovery.

We can also return to the focus of this sharing – treasuring lives.

We first need to treasure our own lives and know our value to others. We sometimes forget this, but we should remind ourselves that we should treasure what we have and the stable and positive environment we live in.

Then, very importantly, we need to treasure those who are a part of our daily lives – our family, our friends and those who are helping achieve your goals. These people give you love, friendship and support (sometimes unconditionally) and you need to ask yourself – am I treasuring them?

And finally, you need to treasure the lives of others that you may not know – good people that are nearby you, good people that are far away from you. These are the kind of people who would be willing to help you if you perhaps fell down, or unexpectedly need help. This spirit of helping those you don’t know is one that you will learn about at some point in your life and has helped me at certain points in my own life. In some cases, I think I could owe my life to them.

Please remember to treasure all lives – people unknown, people around you that you know, and of course yourself. This positive spirit will keep us all safe and help us in our time of need.

Mr John Guest
6 March 2023