Still, she willingly gave up her career when, in 1998, her husband proposed relocating the family to Turkey for his work. The following summer, sideswiped by the loneliness of being unable to speak the language and the self-doubt of having no job of her own, Petal took her daughter back to California for a long visit with friends.
Ironically, as it turned out, they used some of their time to gather disaster education mater-ials: Petal’s daughter, then eight years old, had joined an Istanbul Girl Scout troop, and Petal had an idea—based on her childhood experiences—to create an earthquake-safety badge. The trip went so well, they extended it a week, switching their departure tickets to August 20, 1999. On August 17, Petal heard that an earthquake had rocked northwest Turkey and torn Izmit apart. Two days after her return, Petal and her husband entered the ravaged city.
Petal was perfectly suited to her new mission: She had lived through earthquakes without being debilitated by the trauma. She knew how to help people talk to one another, even about very sensitive issues. And she had just stuffed her suitcase, and her head, with critical disaster-preparedness knowledge. Back in Istanbul, Petal immediately created an earthquake safety workshop for other expat women. She expected a dozen to attend; about 100 showed up. Demand grew quickly: She put on workshops for another women’s group, expat schools and local businesses. Her Turkish neighbors became interested, and she taught them too, through a translator. She began to understand that the simple protective steps every Californian picks up in childhood, such as fastening furniture to walls and not hanging heavy objects over the bed, were rarely discussed in Turkey. People didn’t understand how vulnerable they were, and there was no widely disseminated source of earthquake safety information.
News of Petal’s seminars quickly spread. The American Friends Service Committee—an international relief organization founded by the Quakers—asked Petal to draft materials that community organizers could distribute throughout the neighborhoods. A Turkish magazine wrote admiringly about her efforts. And in 2000, Istanbul’s Bog˘ aziçi University, home of the national earthquake research institute, asked her for help in developing the Istanbul Community Impact Project; the resulting curriculum educated 4,000 teachers about what to do during an earthquake, how to prepare buildings to reduce the chance of injuries and how to organize first responders. The lessons those teachers passed on to their one million students over the next three years were so well received that the Turkish Ministry of National Education asked her to expand the program so that 25,000 more teachers could attend. Five years after Izmit, the woman who once felt alienated from Turkey had helped to protect and educate five million Turkish students. “Everyone cares that their schools and their children are safe,” she says. “We just need to think ahead.”
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