Remains of OFW fatality in Turkey’s earthquake to arrive Wednesday

A toy bear is seen on a pile of bricks and concrete in the aftermath of a deadly earthquake in Elbistan, Turkey February 14, 2023. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

LUCENA CITY — The remains of Wilma Tezcan, one of the overseas Filipino workers, who died in the magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Turkey on Feb. 6, will arrive Wednesday night, Feb. 15, in the country, her father told the Inquirer.

“She will arrive tonight at the NAIA (Ninoy Aquino International Airport) around 6 with her daughter Irish Nicole,” William Abulad, 67, Wilma’s father, said in a phone interview Wednesday in this city.

Abulad said Wilma’s husband, Gurol Tezcan, failed to accompany his wife’s remains on her return home after he lost his passport.

“Her remains will be brought straight to our home for the wake,” Abulad said.

Their family is grateful to President Marcos Jr. for the effort of the government in the repatriation of her body, he said.

Abulad asked Marcos to continue helping their family with the untimely death of Wilma, the family’s main breadwinner.

“We need more financial assistance until we overcome the tragedy that hit us. I appeal to President Marcos, and the national and local governments to please continue helping us,” Abulad said.

Lucena Mayor Mark Alcala shouldered the cost of transporting the remains from the airport to their house in Barangay Ilayang Dupay on the outskirts of the city.

“I pity the family. The local government will do everything to help them cope with the tragedy,” Alcala said in a phone interview, also on Wednesday.

Abulad said they had yet to set the date for the interment. He said the decision was left to the discretion of her daughter.

She will be buried in a local private cemetery, according to Muslim rites and tradition to obey her husband’s request.

Abulad, a former village councilor and now a village watchman, also thanked those who offered financial help to the family.

An overseas contract worker, Wilma was in her ninth year in Turkey, according to Abulad.

She married Gurol, who works in the food delivery business, in a Muslim wedding rite in Turkey before the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020. The couple, along with Nicole, 25, Wilma’s daughter with her estranged husband in the Philippines, has been living in Istanbul.

Wilma was working as a child caretaker for a Turkish family in Istanbul. The family of her employer and Wilma were on vacation in the city of Antakya, in Hatay, the worst-hit area near the border to Syria, when the tremor struck.

Rescuers pulled her body out on Feb. 9 from the rubble.

Only two Filipinos have died from the quake in Turkey, both of them married to Turkish nationals, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA).

The other victim was buried in Turkey.

A Filipino woman and her three children remained missing after the tremor, said the DFA.

The woman, married to a Turkish national, is believed to have been trapped with her children inside their house since the earthquake struck, said Foreign Undersecretary Eduardo Jose de Vega. Her husband was not at home when the earthquake struck.

As of Tuesday, the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria killed more than 36,000.

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