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SALT LAKE CITY -- A University of Utah political science professor knows exactly what it's like to be buried beneath the rubble after a large earthquake. It happened to him in Turkey 12 years ago.
Sunday's magnitude-7.2 earthquake in Turkey brought to Hakan Yavuz's mind the 1999 temblor that registered 7.6 and killed more than 17,000 people in that country.
"Indeed it brings back what I went through. It is difficult. It takes a long time to overcome it," he said.
Psychologically it's so difficult to be in such a helpless situation, under the rubble.
–Hakan Yavuz
Yavuz was in Istanbul at the time, headed to a conference. The quake hit in the middle of the night.
"I was at the seventh floor, but the building was going down," he recalled. "I jumped during the aftershock. It was on the hill, so the land was moving underneath the building."
Yavuz jumped from about 150 feet up. "The building was totally collapsing, but you didn't have any chance. You want to survive, so whatever opportunity you see, you want to take," he explained.
He landed in soft soil but broke his legs, a foot and his backbone. He was buried but searchers found him as they looked for someone else.
He says healing psychologically was tougher than physically. Yavuz says he has put most of the disaster behind him, but it still rattles him.
"It took a long time to overcome it, but still, when I fly and the plane shakes, it reminds me of the whole thing," he said.
Related:
5 quake survivors saved from rubble in Turkey
Five people were pulled out alive Monday from the rubble in eastern Turkey after a 7.2-magnitude quake leveled buildings and killed some 272 people.Yavuz says the country has not only a humanitarian crisis because of Sunday's temblor, but also a political one. Kurdish separatists live at the earthquake's epicenter in eastern Turkey, and he says that the government will be challenged to put political and ethnic differences aside to help them.
"The government is very much mobilized not to give any reason for the Kurdish nationalist movement to accuse the government that they are not doing much because of their ethnicity," he said.
He adds that the world will be watching the government's response.
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Written with contributions from Peter Samore and John Daley.
