Father of Queens man killed with family in Turkey earthquake ‘spent over 12 hours digging’ to save them

The father of a Queens man who died with his family in the devastating earthquake in Turkey watched helplessly as a building collapsed on top of them, then “spent over 12 hours digging” through the rubble in a desperate attempt to save them despite a recent open-air operation. heart. , a relative revealed on Friday.

Dad Burak Firik, 35, who lives in Korona, died along with his wife Kimberly, 32, their two sons, Hamza, 2, and Bilal, 1, and his mother in a 7.8 magnitude earthquake on Monday. which killed more than 22,000 people.

The family traveled to Elbistan to support Firik’s father in his recent major heart surgery, Kimberly Firik’s sister, Salma Salazar, said in a heartbreaking interview with CNN on Friday.

But the recovering father “was the only survivor,” she said of the huge loss that left her family “broken.”

“Basically, he saw his house collapse before his eyes and he couldn’t do anything,” Salazar said of the five-story apartment building.

“He spent over 12 hours digging and just finding people to help him dig because cars couldn’t get in,” Salazar told CNN of her son-in-law’s father’s heroic efforts.

It was not immediately clear when and how the bodies of the five relatives were found.

But at some point, Firik’s dad called his relatives at the Big Apple and said: “They left, they left – they left,” Salazar said.

“We are all very broken in my family… our hearts are broken,” Salazar told CNN.

She was stunned when asked about her little nephews and finally, after wiping her tears, she replied, “I can’t describe in words how my family feels – they were taken away so quickly.

“They were just kids… we lost all hope.”

She remembered her late sister as “very graceful” and “very attractive”.

“She was very passionate about everything she did and certainly put everyone’s needs ahead of her own,” she said.

Her brother-in-law, a former board member of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-NY), was “very selfless” and “extremely intelligent,” she said.

“And all he wanted to do was help. Help the community,” Salazar told CNN of Firika.

On Thursday, the US State Department confirmed that “at least three US citizens” had died in the quake. Salazar said her sister and two nephews are US citizens.

She called the rising death toll “really hard to understand” and proof that help is desperately needed.

“I want people to know that this is a big problem in Turkey and Syria right now.

“And although I lost my family, there are still people out there nowadays. There are children,” she said.

The death toll in Turkey rose to 19,388 on Friday, while more than 3,300 were killed in neighboring Syria.

This makes it the seventh-biggest natural disaster this century, surpassing the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan and approaching the 31,000 deaths from the 2003 earthquake in neighboring Iran.