Faces are frozen in family photos. Children, who once laughed and played, have become still lifes in wooden frames.

All that is left after the August and November earthquakes of 1999 that rocked Turkey are the pictures. Everywhere, there are pictures.

And there are stories.

To drive out of Istanbul into rural Turkey, one can’t help but pass rows and rows of abandoned apartment buildings set off by military-green tents and vast plots of cement slabs and rubble.

To walk the dirty gravel roads of countless relief camps erected along the North Anatolian fault line of Turkey is to be greeted by families—mothers, young and old—left holding memories of their children killed before sunrise that tragic August morning.

“He died in my hands,” said a young mother in Adapazari, clasping a portrait of her 2-year-old crushed in the rubble of their apartment walls, their ceiling and floor.

An estimated 20,000 people were killed by the August and November earthquakes. The lives that the Aug. 17 quake—which measured 7.4 on the Richter scale—didn’t claim have been permanently marred. (The Nov. 12 quake was measured at 7.1 on the Richter scale.)

Yadigar Erdem, an older Turkish mother in the same camp, lost her adult son, as a result of the violent shaking.

She survived the initial quake. But Erdem, along with her daughter-in-law and four grandchildren, had been buried beneath blocks of sand-mixed cement for 14 hours. Soon after she suffered a heart attack.

Since both mothers, young and old, lived in apartments, there will be no government programs to rebuild the places they called home. Their temporary shelters of corrugated tin, two of an estimated 50,000 that thread this fault line, will likely become permanent. Government rebuilding programs only exist for homeowners, not for the one million left homeless after both waves of destruction.

“Does that mean we are not citizens of this country if we are renters? Does this mean there is no help?,” Erdem asked, crying for help.

Enter Catholic Relief Services.

Prior to the quakes that rocked the northwestern pastoral regions of Turkey, Catholic Relief Services (CRS) didn’t have a presence here.

Just a few paragraphs ran in the Aug. 22-29, 1999 issue of The Catholic New World. (“Pope, cardinal respond to quake”) in which Cardinal George urged the Chicago Archdiocese to support CRS in assisting quake victims.

The response the agency received, said Thomas Price, regional communications advisor for the agency in Europe, was “immense.” But, Price added, the need was also great.

Since August 1999, CRS has dedicated more than $5 million in emergency funds to Turkey. All told, the agency anticipates it will spend $8 million toward earthquake relief projects over a three-year period.

From experience in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, Price understands that the help families receive from CRS may be as good as it gets.

As for “temporary” status of housing for the poor families like the Erdems becoming permanent for another harsh winter, “We’ve seen that happen before in other places,” said Price.

Even CRS lacks a permanent residence in the country. Fourteen months after the vicious episodes, the international relief agency still has no office in Turkey.

According to Provash Budden, the youthful American CRS program manager for Turkey, (based out of Egypt), there is no time for such administrative luxuries. “There’s too much work to be done,” said Budden.

While the bulk of CRS work in Turkey continues to revolve around such issues as constructing temporary shelter through village camps and providing hot meals, medical supplies, clothing and other necessities, more ambitious projects have been launched.

In addition to the agency’s relief mission, CRS, through Budden and others, has begun to express longer-term goals of sparking systemic change.

“We would like to be known as a peace and justice agency, not just a relief agency. We want to do more than apply a Band-Aid here,” said Budden.

Partnered with the Vatican-sponsored Caritas Turkey, or with International Blue Crescent, another non-governmental organization (NGO), CRS has taken the lead to “do more” by helping to ensure that children displaced by the quakes stay in school and by clearing paths to give their parents a voice in this critical area.

“Education is a delicate subject because it is what you put in the heads of children,” said Sleiman Saikali, a Caritas Turkey coordinator. It is also an area in which the Catholic agency has made in-roads with the Turkish government and its citizens.

As both Catholic agencies ventured into towns ravaged by the national disaster, Saikali said they were greeted by the same words. “People said to us, ‘I can’t believe you’re helping us,’” he said.

That response is understandable in a country that’s 99.8 percent Muslim and less than 0.2 percent Christian and Jewish. Aid from a more unlikely source—Greece—has changed the way Turks look at the people they’ve been at odds with for centuries. Budden hopes that CRS efforts will give the Catholic Church a new face in this region.

In the Adapazari camp, a school built by CRS and Caritas services 1,200 children each day. At recess, the sounds outside the structure are very familiar: calls, screams between friends, balls whizzing foot-to-foot. But these young ones haven’t forgotten siblings lost and playmates still designated as “missing.”

During a four-month period Caritas distributed over 17,000 hot meals to quake victims. Together, the agencies also established a food coupon system to meet the needs of the poorest of the poor. These are stories at the edges of the damage.

At the August quake’s epicenter, the rural town of Gulcuk, was presented higher hurdles to leap. Barbaros Hayrettin Lisesi, a school located in the town off the Gulf of Izmit, was hit hardest by the earthquake. The wrath of Aug. 17 was both physical and psychological. The need remains for healing in both areas.

The quake killed 52 students and eight teachers. Over a year later, there are 151 still missing. In 1999, there were over 1,000 young people enrolled in the school. That number plummeted to 560 in the following year. Families of students who survived the quake exited the region, in some cases to join relatives in other areas.

In addition to wreckage incurred by the student body, there also was structural damage to the school itself. The violent shake split the building in half, ripping an 8-inch gap in its walls.

Both quakes hacked off miles upon miles of the coast, sinking homes, apartments and businesses into the eastern waters of the Sea of Marmara. Light poles, as well as trees, stretch out from their liquid graves. That plunge rushed water above the new coast flooding the buildings that weathered the initial jarring.

If history is any indication, the work of CRS in Turkey will continue in years to come. The July 2000 edition of National Geographic detailed the high activity of “jolts” in the country. Since 1939, there have been 13 major earthquakes (6.5 or over) along the coast of the Black Sea, with the last two closer to the estimated 7 million residents of greater Istanbul.

Scientists are fairly certain a major earthquake will occur within the next 10 to 20 years. What remains a mystery is the exact location of that quake’s epicenter.

What is clear is the level of anxiety this fact has struck in the hearts of quake survivors. “People are afraid, even in Istanbul,” said native Turk Muzaffer Baca, a seasoned journalist and co-founder of International Blue Crescent.

Although the city has begun a campaign to build sturdy, flexible living spaces, Baca said there are an estimated 250,000 buildings constructed in a questionable manner. Many return to the empty buildings they once called home to use kitchens and bathrooms in the day, only to sleep inside the safety of tents at night rather than risk another dawn disaster.

While the roots of these catastrophic quakes lie deep below Turkey’s surface, the magnitude of the lives lost has been exacerbated by human errors. On drives out of Istanbul, beams clearly stick up from the four corners of buildings. Budden said the beams are the first sign that floors will be added atop structure like Lego blocks.

“That is a big problem here,” Budden said of the illegal practice. “A lot of damage is caused when upper floors simply fall off.” Levels either slide to the ground or they “pancake,” as was the case when Erdem dropped from the fourth to the second floor.

Driving down the road from the Gulcuk school, the difference between the haves and the have nots can’t be denied.

On one side stand vacant apartment clusters with plaster facades veined by spider web cracks and splotches of exposed brick. Budden described these places as being “bombed out.” On the other side, closest to the coast, are buildings visibly untouched by the quake. Those coastal structures happen to be the property of the Turkish navy. Despite these and other inequalities accepted as part of life, Turks, especially the young in schools along the fault line, choose to remain optimistic about the long-term future.

Before those dreams can come to life, families must make it through the winter.

Last December, CRS, along with IBC, provided 5,000 gas heaters to families in Duzce, the town most severely impacted by the November quake. Those needs have accelerated over the past 12 months. The agency plans to be a part of the rebuilding process in Turkey by seeking the talents of architecture students from Sakarya University.