By KATE LAUGHLIN

By CLAYTON PARK A North Seattle man's business trip to Turkey took an unexpected turn when a 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck that country in the early morning of Aug. 17.

Mustafa Kapusuzoglu, 37, is a native of Turkey who became a U.S. citizen two years ago and now lives in Ballard. He works both as a vice president for the Fremont Dock Company and as an independent sales representative for Fonar Corp., a New York company that makes magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners - medical equipment used to detect and diagnose human illnesses.

The night the quake hit, Kapusuzoglu - who was wrapping up a business trip to Turkey on behalf of Fonar - had decided to visit his parents' home in the nation's capitol city of Ankara before catching a return flight to Seattle the next day.

He was woken out of a sound sleep around 3 a.m. by the earthquake.

"I said to myself, 'OK, it's going to pass,'" recalls Kapusuzoglu, who spoke to the Jet City Maven via telephone from Turkey. He said he realized the quake was much bigger than he first thought when it continued to shake the building he was in. "I thought it was going to come down, but it didn't, thankfully," he said.

When Kapusuzoglu heard his relatives screaming out his name from across the street, he realized "I was the only one left in the building!" However, instead of evacuating the building, he decided to stay in bed, since it appeared that the tremors had subsided.

His efforts to go back to sleep were thwarted by the constant ringing of his cell phone. He finally decided to answer the phone. The caller was a friend who worked for the Turkish government. He was told that the epicenter of the quake was in the city of Izmit, about 170 miles from Ankara, and that neighboring cities, including Istanbul, were also hard hit.

Kapusuzoglu guessed that the quake - to have been felt that strongly in Ankara - must have devastated those cities.

His fears proved to be correct. As of the Jet City Maven's press time, government estimates of the number of quake victims had risen to more than 14,000 people dead - with more bodies continuing to be found every day. Several hundreds of thousands of people were also left homeless, with winter looming.

Kapusuzoglu immediately headed over to the office of one of his longtime friends, Sadi Sonuncuoglu, Turkey's state minister of housing, where he volunteered to help organize rescue teams.

The state minister readily accepted his offer, more than happy to utilize Kapusuzoglu's highly-regarded leadership skills, as well as his extensive network of contacts, including Turkish government officials and the medical community, both in Turkey and abroad.

Among other things, Kapusuzoglu's father is the retired longtime chief justice of Turkey's supreme court, and four of his sisters and two of his brothers-in-law are doctors (one is a dentist). As far as himself, Kapusuzoglu has done work periodically for the Turkish government over the years, including serving as a contract negotiator for construction projects throughout the country.

Kapusuzoglu is also multi-lingual - fluent in Turkish, English, German and enough Italian "to get by" - which has come in handy in organizing international earthquake relief efforts.

Within hours of the quake, Kapusuzoglu was able to organize and send five medical rescue teams to Izmit. "We acted as quickly as possible ... and were able to save some lives," he said.

Kapusuzoglu and the state minister of housing also went to Izmit later that day to survey the damage for themselves.

Even though Kapusuzoglu had been through earthquakes before, he said nothing could have prepared him for what he witnessed that day.

"It's like nothing I've ever seen. There are no words to describe it," he said. "It's like a dragon went through, destroying houses one after another. You see an old building you think would be the first to come down and there is no damage, and next to it, a modern building that should've been in good shape, but it's lost totally and of course all the people who lived there are all killed."

Kapusuzoglu said "everyone" in Turkey, it seems, "has lost someone" to the quake. While no one in his immediate family was hurt, he said he learned that three distant relatives, who lived in the town of Sakarya (about 20 miles from Izmit), were killed.

Instead of returning to Seattle, Kapusuzoglu has decided to extend his stay in Turkey indefinitely - continuing to lend his assistance in coordinating rescue efforts for as long as it is needed.

"We're now trying to help people set up tents - we call them tent cities - in the disaster area," he said. He's also doing his best to make sure that the aid that is pouring into the country from throughout the world is getting to those who need it most.

More tents and portable toilets, in particular, are still greatly needed, he said.

Kapusuzoglu said he greatly misses his family in Seattle - his wife Gwen and their children Kurt (8) and Amina (6). His mother-in-law, Suzie Burke, reports that Gwen is planning to join her husband in Turkey the third week of September. Hopefully, they will be able to return together to the U.S., but right now everything is still up in the air.