Local tennis player stuck in Turkey after earthquakes
By Ari Hait
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DELRAY BEACH, Florida (WPBF) — The earthquakes in Turkey have killed thousands of people and crumbled thousands of buildings.
And one local woman is right in the middle of all of it.
“It’s just been nerve-racking,” said Gayal Black of Delray Beach. “I’m worried about her right now sleeping.”
Black’s daughter, Hurricane Tyra Black, is in Antalya, Turkey, about 500 miles from the epicenter of the quakes.
The 21-year-old is a professional tennis player and is in Antalya for a tournament.
Gayal said she woke up in the middle of the night Monday feeling something was wrong.
She turned on the TV and saw the news about the earthquake.
She then spent the next several hours trying to get someone on the phone.
“I couldn’t get anybody. It was just devastating,” Gayal said. “Your heart just drops out from your insides. You don’t know what’s wrong. You don’t know if they’re injured, if they were in a building during the night when it happened.”
After almost three hours, Gayal finally spoke to Tyra, learned she was OK and, in fact, had slept through the earthquake.
Tyra told her mother she wasn’t worried.
That changed, though, after the second quake hit when Tyra was awake and at lunch.
“I thought I was dizzy or something,” Tyra said by phone from Turkey. “I felt everything shaking. Everything at lunch started moving. People started running out.”
Tyra said they spent the day outside, not sure where to go or where was safe.
“We saw the videos online about how things started collapsing all over Turkey and everywhere,” she said. “So, we did not want to leave. We were scared to go inside. We didn’t know what to do.”
Tyra has since been allowed back into her hotel, but because her hotel is right next to the water, she’s also concerned about a potential tsunami.
She said she’s been told the airport will be closed for at least the next two days, and there are no rental cars available.
Tyra and Gayal said all they can do now is pray and hope for the best.
“Is that couple of stories going to fall down?” Gayal said. “You don’t know. Everything around is just crashing to the ground in rubble.”
“We’re just trying to figure out if it’s safe to go home, go to the airport, any of those things right now,” Tyra said.
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