KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — In East Tennessee, families are witnessing and reliving the devastating images from a recent earthquake in Turkey and Syria. The earthquake killed more than 3,400 people as of Monday evening and toppled thousands of buildings.
Selin Sazil, a student at the University of Tennessee whose family owns the Turkish Market and Deli store, said the last few hours have been a constant state of worry.
She said she received messages of panic and shock from her extended family about what had occurred.
"It's devastating. It's shocking because even though earthquakes happen commonly in Turkey, sometimes you never really expect such a strong one like this," Sazil said.
She never thought her family would be affected by a natural disaster like this. Her family lives on the Southern border of Turkey, in Adana.
In a matter of seconds, the country she visited and has family in was suddenly turned into dust. Her family is alive and survived.
"It's just saddening, just to see like your home country. Like, that's where my blood is," Sazil said. "My parents are both born and raised. They're seeing them and they're just kind of stressing about their family as well."
Her country and culture are her identity. Everything she stands for comes from her Turkish background. This earthquake has led her family to go through their own aftershocks of emotions.
Like Sazil, Knoxville business owner Yassin Terou is going through the same emotions.
He is from Syria and still has family there. He is now looking to help the people in his home country. Terou said Syria was already dealing with poverty and economic challenges. This 7.8 earthquake is now another layer of hardship.
"This is another layer to the people, I don't know how they can deal with it," he said. "People dealing with all this over the 10 or 12 years, and they already have no extra money to deal with any tragedy."
His goal is to raise funds to send back to Syria to provide a soup kitchen and health care. He's using a site called LaunchGood to get started.
"If you think we are very far away, but we are connected. You will know someone next to you is crying about their family, they lost somebody yesterday, or they don't know about any of their family today," he said.
If you would like to help Yassin on his mission, click here.