Earthquake and tsunami triggered by the second magnitude 7.8 quake, which killed tens of thousands of people in Syria and Turkey
Its creation is another show of the devastating power of last Monday’s magnitude 7.8 quake, which killed tens of thousands of people in Syria and Turkey and destroyed entire city blocks.
Researchers say people need to brace themselves for yet more quakes and aftershocks, as well as deteriorating weather. “The possibility for major aftershocks causing even more damage will continue for weeks and months,” says Ilan Kelman, who studies disasters and health at University College London.
The Ring of Fire runs along the west coast of the United States. Subduction, where one plate slides below another, is what causes earthquakes and tsunamis in this zone.
Last Monday’s earthquake was the strongest to hit anywhere in the world since an 8.1 magnitude quake struck a region near the South Sandwich Islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean in 2021, though the remote location of that incident resulted in little damage.
The earthquake and its aftershocks have flattened buildings and sent rescuers digging through concrete debris to find survivors, with the death toll expected to increase further. The researchers talked to Nature about the activity happening and what the next few days will bring.
The quake-stricken east-western region of Turkey is lit up by earthquakes, says David Rothery, an open university scientist
Most of Turkey sits on the Anatolian plate between two major faults: the North Anatolian Fault and the East Anatolian Fault. The southern rim of a plate that carries Arabia, including Syria, is being pushed out towards the west by the northern part of a plate, according to David Rothery, a scientist at the Open University. “Turkey is moving west about 2 centimetres per year along the East Anatolian Fault,” he adds. “Half the length of this fault is lit up now with earthquakes.”
After the 1999 earthquake in Izmit, Aykut Barka, a geologist at Istanbul Technical University, warned that the increased stress could trigger a similar rupture near Düzce, a town roughly 100 kilometres east8. His work persuaded the authorities to close school buildings that had been damaged by the Izmit shock. When a magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck the city 2 months later, the buildings collapsed.
The conflict in Syria has made it difficult to enforce building standards. The buildings in the northwestern regions of Syria collapsed as a result of the earthquake. Some war-damaged buildings in Syria have been rebuilt using low-quality materials or “whatever materials are available”, says Rothery. They might have fallen down quicker than things built for more money. We’ve yet to find out,” he adds.
The elements are putting lives at risk with scattered showers and snow in the region, who have gone days without food and water, and who are trapped underneath the rubble. Meanwhile, officials have asked residents to leave buildings for their own safety amid concerns of more aftershocks.
Rescue teams are still desperately searching for signs of life underneath the rubble of collapsed buildings while the chances of finding survivors decreases with every passing hour.
A number of factors have contributed to the earthquake being so lethal. One of them is the time of day it occurred. With the quake hitting early in the morning, many people were in their beds when it happened, and are now trapped under the rubble of their homes.
Efforts to retrieve survivors have been hampered by a cold winter spell across quake-stricken regions, while authorities grapple with the logistical challenges of transporting aid into northwestern Syria amid an acute humanitarian crisis compounded by years of political strife.
Embedding earthquakes into the communities of Hatay, (Kahramanmaraş), amir Jaiswal, and Nabil
Images of destruction and debris supports the idea that there are highly variable qualities of designs and construction. Structural failures following an earthquake typically end with partial collapses. “Total collapses are something you always try to avoid both in codes and the actual design,” he added.
Jaiswal said that if the structures were not designed for the high intensity of the earthquake, they might not perform well.
The buildings that have collapsed were built before 1999 and have older codes, according to Erdik. He added there also would have been instances where some buildings didn’t conform to code.
“The codes are very modern in Turkey, very similar to US codes, but again, the codes conformity is an issue that we’ve tried to tackle with legal and administrative procedures.” He said so. The permits from the municipalities are what we have. But there are things that don’t have anything.
Some efforts remain in the provinces of Kahramanmaraş and Hatay. On Saturday, a couple and their 12-year-old child were rescued in Hatay, 296 hours after the earthquake, state news agency Anadolu reported.
Why are people dying in Syria? How strong earthquakes can be: Why a few lives per day is enough in Syria for the rest of the world
The first line of defense is the community and the citizens, he told CNN. “They dug up family, friends, neighbors.”
But other experts warn that the window for post-earthquake search-and-rescue is rapidly closing. Ilan Kelman, professor of disasters and health at University College London, said: “Typically, few survivors are pulled out after 72 hours – yet every life saved is essential and some people are extricated after many days.”
Time is the enemy in Turkey and Syria. People die due to immediate medical needs such as bleeding to death or succumbing to crush injuries; due to aftershocks that collapse precarious structures with people underneath; and due to the weather which has dropped below freezing at night and which has been cold during the day, so people die through hypothermia. Many die waiting for rescue because they don’t have food or water.
Many people may be familiar with the termRichter Scale, which was used for many years, but now scientists use a more accurate measure of the size of a quake, according to the US Geological Survey.
The magnitude is how strong of an earthquake it is. The intensity of the shaking can vary depending on the local geography and topography, and depth of the quake. On the magnitude scale, each increase of one whole number translates to 32 times more energy.
There has been no major damage or injuries caused by the strong earthquake that struck near the South Sandwich Islands in the southern Atlantic Ocean in 2021, though the remote location of that occurrence resulted in little damage.
CNN’s meteorologist and severe weather expert Chad Myers said, “we always talk about the epicenter, but in this case we should talk about the epi-line.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/middleeast/earthquake-turkey-syria-why-deadly-intl/index.html
Erdospheric earthquakes of Sumatra, Indonesia, triggered by a “incredible sound” of a devastated olive grove
Plates move instead of moving vertically in a strike slip. “Why that matters is because the buildings don’t want to go back and forth. The secondary waves go back and forth as well.
A 9.1 magnitude earthquake on the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia was followed by a 9.1 magnitude tsunami that left hundreds of thousands of people dead or missing.
When that incident happened, walls of water engulfed the entire town, houses were dragged onto highways, and the country was left with its worst nuclear disaster on record.
A verdant olive grove was cleaved into two during last week’s devastating earthquake in Turkey, creating a valley 984 feet long (about 300 meters) that now divides the area.
Irfan Aksu, who lives in the neighborhood, told Turkish news agency Demioren News Agency that when the earthquake started last Monday it created “an incredible sound” where he lived.
He implored for experts to inspect the area for possible future damage. He said that there are 1000 houses and 7000 people living in the town. “Of course, we are scared… if it was a little closer, it would have happened in the middle of our town.”
The need to be ready for natural disasters has long been spoken of by the President. A year after an earthquake hit Izmir and surrounding areas in 2020, Erdogan reportedly boasted that the government had been with the people “from the very first minute.”
Erdogan’s government has been stung by criticism about its initial response to this month’s earthquake, with prosecutors launching an investigation into a lawyer who tweeted “where is the state?” in criticism of the response. The lawyer was accused of insulting the state.
The Turkey earthquake is a complete tragedy, but will we learn anything from it? — An Istanbul economist at CERN-Seinfeldt: Assessing the consequences of the 2011 earthquake
He describes the Turkey earthquake as a complete tragedy. Yet McCloskey is hopeful that we will learn from it. If we do, the next red line he draws on a map will not necessarily equal a catastrophic loss of lives.
Ozgenler’s answer is affirmative. He says improvements that were placed on the books after the Aegean earthquake were a good start, but more needs to be done.
Critics have pointed to so-called “zoning amnesties” given to contractors. The buildings were constructed quicker because safety measures intended to strengthen the building’s capacity to resist an earthquake were not taken into account.
The buildings that were knocked over this month were mostly undamaged, according to him. The ground floors were used for stores and other commercial properties.
He believes that many people decided to increase their commercial space by knocking out load-bearing walls or columns.
Ozgenler says, “I’m really, really angry when I see this, because they have blood on their hands.” “I mean, you don’t need an earthquake of 7.7 [magnitude] to see a building … fall over like this, if there’s no walls in the building, no core.”
It’s up to the state to regulate weak buildings in earthquake prone areas even if owners and tenants are responsible, says analyst Sinan Ulgen at Istanbul’s Center for Economics and Foreign Policy.
The initial earthquake response by the government may cause backlash from some people, which may lead to it giving shelter to all of the estimated 20 million people in need within a year.
The elections were supposed to be called in a few weeks but this is happening now. It remains to be seen whether elections will be possible, given the challenges of holding a vote in heavily damaged cities in the earthquake zone.
As for the political implications, Ulgen says, “There are no poll numbers to show the political impact of the disaster, but ultimately it will be a handicap for the government.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/20/1157837625/turkey-earthquake-damage-istanbul-safety-readiness
Anisotropies in Turkey have come to an end: The epicenter of a seismically devastating earthquake, and the evacuation of many buildings
Noting that the elections are a constitutional obligation, he says ultimately it will be up to President Erdogan to decide if he wants to delay the vote, but doing so would require parliamentary approval that would need opposition support, which he sees as highly unlikely.
Meanwhile, the six-party opposition coalition has yet to announce its own presidential candidate, adding one more layer of uncertainty to where Turkey goes from here.
The quake’s epicenter was in the province’s Defne district, Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said Monday, adding that there have been 26 aftershocks since.
The White Helmets volunteer rescue group said there had been more than 130 injuries in northwest Syria. The quake also led to the collapse of a number of buildings that were already hit by the previous earthquake.
“Our teams are working to take the injured to hospitals, inspect the affected villages and towns, and remove rubble to open the roads for the ambulances,” the White Helmets said.
The earthquake was initially reported by the USGS as a magnitude of 6.4 at a deep 10 kilometers, but it was later revised down to a magnitude of 6.3.
People have been warned to stay away from buildings. Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay earlier Monday asked the public “not to enter the damaged buildings, especially to take their belongings.”
Zahir said that they went back to their house and that they went away to seek help from God.
On Sunday, Turkey’s disaster management authority said it had ended most search and rescue operations nearly two weeks after the earthquake struck as experts say the chances of survival for people trapped in the rubble this far into the disaster are unlikely.
The 2006-2007 Indonesia-Andaman earthquake as a landmark for a new generation of earthquakes: Predictions from the Sunda trench west of Sumatra
It isn’t the first time the method has correctly pinpointed an upcoming trembler. Stein and his colleagues came up with the idea that the next earthquakes might occur near the city of Izmit2. Two years later, that quake arrived — killing more than 17,000 people. The Sunda trench west of Sumatra had been calculated by Mc Closkey and his colleagues in 2005, after the 2004 Indonesia–Andaman earthquake. It came 12 days after the study was published. In 2008 a report was prepared by the Geological Survey of Japan in Tsukuba which projected the increase in stress on three adjoining fault lines as a result of the China earthquake. Powerful earthquakes were created by two of the faults in the following decade.
It isn’t possible to use the technique everywhere. Researchers can only use this model for the regions where the seismology is well known, because it requires some knowledge of previous earthquakes. So it is most successful in forecasting aftershocks, which are typically smaller than main shocks. Still, there are many unknowns, and scientists are working hard to evaluate the model further.
February’s aftermath was particularly painful for those researchers who have been warning for a long time. A red line on a map means people are going to be killed and houses are going to be destroyed.