A 7.8-magnitude quake struck Turkey and Syria, followed within 10 hours by a 7.5-magnitude quake in the same region, killing at least 1,500 people
earth
February 6, 2023
People search for survivors in Diyarbakir, Turkey after the first magnitude 7.8 earthquake ILYAS AKENGIN/AFP via Getty Images
Two large earthquakes hit Turkey and Syria within 10 hours, causing widespread devastation and claiming at least 1,500 lives.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck near the Turkish city of Gaziantep at 1:17 am (UTC) on February 6. This was followed by a magnitude 7.5 earthquake about 130 kilometers north of Gaziantep at 10:24 am, according to the US Geological Survey.
The earthquake wreaked havoc across Turkey and Syria, leaving people trapped under collapsed buildings and damaging critical infrastructure such as roads, power lines and sewage systems.
The combined official death toll for the two countries had already reached more than 1,500 by noon UTC, and officials expect it to rise rapidly in the coming days.
The earthquake occurred along the East Anatolian Fault, which runs through eastern Turkey from the southwest to the northeast. The first quake, which struck while people were asleep, caused tremors as far as Cyprus and Egypt.
Scientists say the second tremor was likely a particularly large aftershock caused by the initial tilt of the tectonic plates that caused the first quake. “If you jump in one place, it starts jumping in another, like a chain reaction,” says David Rothery, of the Open University in England.
However, the second quake may have been caused by the rupture of a related fault segment highlighted by the first quake considered a separate event.
The disaster is the most serious by an earthquake in Turkey since a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck the city of Erzincan in 1939, killing 33,000 people. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at his press conference that “everyone put their heart and soul into the rescue effort”.
Earthquakes rated between 7 and 7.9 on the moment magnitude scale are classified as major events causing partial or complete collapse of buildings.
International search and rescue organizations are now racing against time to send teams to the worst affected areas to extract people from the rubble of collapsing buildings. Those rescued within the first 24 hours have the best chances of survival, but the chaos caused by the cold, Syrian civil war and two earthquakes has made it difficult to move quickly to affected areas. is getting harder, experts warn.
Bill McGuire of University College London said the poor quality of the building likely contributed to the casualties. “Images of the affected city make it clear that rescue teams have a tremendous amount of work to do.”
“Many of the buildings appear to have been apartment complexes that had pancake collapses,” he says. “This happens when the floors and walls are not joined together well enough, so that each floor collapses vertically into the floor below, leaving behind a stack of concrete layers like packs of cards, in which people There’s very little space for them to survive.”
Preparing water, food and shelter for those displaced by the earthquake is also a priority, according to Ilan Kelman, also from University College London, especially when the local temperature dropped to -4°C overnight this week. Because it is predicted to be below C (25°F). “Severe fatalities from hypothermia and other weather-related conditions are possible.”
It is notoriously difficult for seismologists to give advance warning of earthquakes, so building earthquake-resistant buildings and infrastructure is widely considered to be the best defense against large-scale disasters. increase.
Since 2004, all buildings in Turkey have been legally required to comply with the latest seismic standards, but both Syria and Turkey have large-scale There are thousands of buildings that are not designed to withstand extreme seismic activity.
“We survived this earthquake,” says Kelman. “If the infrastructure had been built correctly, this would have been a major earthquake, but not an earthquake disaster.”
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