Concern operations coordinator from Leitrim assisting Turkey/Syria earthquake survivors

Ros O’Sullivan, Head of Emergency Operations with Concern Worldwide, who lives in Leitrim Village with his wife Úna and family, is currently in southern Turkey and north west Syria assisting in the aftermath of the deadly earthquakes that have so far claimed over 41,000 lives.

In an article with the Irish Examiner published yesterday, February 14, Ros tells author Neil Michael that what has happened in that area is as bad as anything he has ever seen.

In the job 29 years, the Galway-born emergency aid co-ordinator is a veteran of disasters such as Nepal in 2015, following the earthquake there, and the Philippines in 2013 after Typhoon Haiyan.

The 60-year-old has spent much of the last 12 months in and out of Ukraine.

The devastation caused by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake.

Within hours of the first earthquake on the morning of February 6, he was packing up his belongings and checking flights before saying farewell to his family in Leitrim and heading for the south-eastern Turkish city of Sanliurfa.

It is one of three ancient cities devastated by the massive Turkey-Syria earthquakes.

“What has happened in Turkey and northwest Syria is as bad as anything that I have ever seen,” he said.

The scale of the damage and the disruption is enormous with millions of people made homeless.

“We're talking about tens of thousands of people hospitalised - and they're the fortunate ones, they survived. You're talking now upwards of over 41,000 people dead so far in Turkey, but there are still thousands missing.

So this is going to take a lot of time, and a lot of financial support,” he says.

Ros's job is to have a logistics plan in place to help displaced communities once the search-and-rescue side of operations has concluded once and for all.