New York's Turkish Consulate General collecting donations to help earthquake victims
NEW YORK -- Volunteers at New York's Turkish Consulate General are working to pack up donations after an earthquake and aftershocks left parts of Turkey and Syria in ruins and hundreds of thousands of people homeless.
Staten Island resident Fatih Ergun says his family is at the epicenter of the earthquake. He took off work the past few days to help.
"My friend says that my sister just died. They could not save her. And then how do you work? You can't. It's just... I gotta leave my grief. This is me getting over my grief and doing something meaningful," he said.
RELATED STORY: Turkey-Syria earthquake 2023: How to help the victims
So far, they've shipped 50 tons of items to Turkey.
Right now, Consul General Reyhan Özgür says they're specifically looking for space heaters, generators, winter tents that can house a family and blankets.
Donations can be dropped off on 46th Street and First Avenue between 9:30 a.m. and 9 p.m.
RELATED STORY: Satellite images show Turkey-Syria quakes "similar to the 1906 earthquake that destroyed San Francisco," NASA says
Mayor Eric Adams also attended a prayer service for earthquake victims at a cultural center in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.
"You have always been there for other countries, and we want to be here for you. We're asking the imam to lift us all up in prayer, to lift up the community as they are feeling the level of devastation," Adams said.
The number of people killed in Turkey and Syria has passed 22,000, making the earthquake one of the worst in decades.
Emergency crews are still making rescues, pulling people who had been trapped for more than 100 hours under broken concrete.
