South Florida tennis player stranded in Turkey due to strong earthquake

(WSVN) – A South Florida tennis player is stuck in Turkey as the country suffers a devastating disaster.

Her family in South Florida is hoping for her safe return, but with many airports in the area closed, there is no clear answer when she will return home.

Her mother is worried since she saw images from Turkey.

Thousands of buildings have collapsed and collapsed, thousands of people have died, and her daughter is right in the middle of it all.

“It’s just unnerving because you’re just, I mean, I’m worried that she’s sleeping right now,” Tyra Black’s mother Gayal Black said.

Hurricane Tyra Black is a professional tennis player and she was in Turkey for a tournament.

Guyale woke up in the middle of the night in Delray Beach, feeling that something was wrong. When she turned on the TV, she saw footage of the aftermath of that catastrophic earthquake.

Then she spent hours trying to get through to someone.

“Your heart just jumps out of your insides,” Gayal said. “You don’t know what happened. You don’t know if they were hurt, if they were in the building the night it happened.”

After about three hours, she finally spoke to her daughter and learned that she was fine, and in fact she slept through the earthquake.

Gayal said that after the earthquake, she called Tyra all day long.

“Oh, every hour,” she said. “Sometimes she just ignored me.”

But everything changed when the second earthquake happened, when Tyra was awake and having lunch.

Guyal called Tyra to explain what it was like.

“I thought I was dizzy or something, I felt like everything was shaking,” Tyra said. “At noon, everything started to move. People started running away.”

Tyra said they spent the day outside not knowing where to go, not knowing where it was safe.

“We saw videos online of how everything started to collapse all over Turkey and everywhere, so we didn’t want to leave,” she said. “We were afraid to go inside. We didn’t know what to do.”

Tyra has since been allowed back to her hotel, and now mother and daughter are together wondering what to do next.

“Is this pair of stories going to collapse? You don’t know, Gayal said. “Everything around just crumbles to the ground with rubble.”

“We’re just trying to figure out if it’s safe to go home now, go to the airport and all that,” Tyra said.

According to Taira, there is a crack in the runway at the airport closest to her, and she needs to take off from there to get to Istanbul.

Only then can she return to South Florida.

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