The Firik family, from Corona, Queens, was in Turkey for over a month visiting family.
"We did a video call," best friend Dogan Kimilli said. "He said he was ok, his family was ok, he showed me around it was so bad."
The family was on the fifth floor of an apartment building in Kahramanmaras, Turkey when the building collapsed during the earthquake. The pre-dawn quake was centered in the town of Pazarcik in Turkey's southeastern Kahramanmaras province and was followed by several powerful aftershocks. As for Firik famiy, Burak studied at Columbia University. He worked in computer science for IBM and Amazon but left the corporate world to build a real estate investment business."He's always contributing, he's the most generous person for this renovation," Turkish Islamic Cultural Center President Ali Kocabas said.
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