A week ago, my colleague Can (who works at HOT and is part of Yer Çizenler) got a message from Dr Çevik, a Turkish surgeon treating people injured by the earthquake in Turkey.

It said: On the first day I went to Rehaniya, when Google Maps was not working, Organic Maps guided us. The importance of such tools is enormous. Good luck to you, Can. 🔥 organic maps 🔥

Can asked him to explain and he did… You can find the video here and the transcript below.

Hi, I’m Dr Bilgehan Çevik. I’m an orthopedic surgeon working in Ankara, Turkey.

I went to work in the earthquake area a few hours after the earthquake in Kahramanmaras on February 6th.

Ten other volunteer doctors and I went by plane to Adana from Ankara. And from there we set out for Antakya, where the earthquake caused the most damage.

We didn’t know the roads and routes of the region, so we tried to use the online map services we were all using before. Unfortunately, the services didn’t work because there was no network.

In this case, Organic maps came to the rescue and we reached our destination by creating our route with organic maps.

So thank you all, you are doing really great work.

Please keep supporting the response though mapping, validating, organising and everything else you are doing… The data is being put to use in a lot of different ways!