Colaiste Eamann Ris principal describes avoiding earthquake in Turkey

The principal of a Cork secondary school who is with a group of his students in Turkey told RedFM News that it’s a surreal situation because life is business-as-usual in the capital Istanbul.

A group of students and staff from Coláiste Éamann Rís in Turner’s Cross were travelling for an Erasmus school exchange in Turkey.

Fortunately, they had not yet left Istanbul for their to their partner school in Malayta  – a city in the east of the country – when the quake struck.

While Malayta has been devastated, Istanbul was not affected.

The death toll from the magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Turkey and Syrian has risen to over 4,800

Speaking to RedFM News, Coláiste Éamann Rís principal Aaron Wolfe says it’s a strange situation.

“In Istanbul it’s been unusual because it looks like it’s business as usual, shops are open, people seem to be going about their business.

“We’re just really grateful that we weren’t there. People have been really good to us, there’s been a lot of contact from home.

“We’ve booked ourselves into a hotel, we looked at coming home straight away but we had already been travelling for more than 24 hours to get here and it didn’t seem fair to the students to put them straight on a plane again.

“We decided to book a hotel, we went around and did a bit of haggling and got the hotel down to €2,500, so we’re staying there for 8 nights. Hopefully everything will work out for us.”