Aftershocks to the East Anatolian Fault: Predictions for a Third Day of Earthquake Recovery in Turkey and Syria
Rescue crews braved freezing temperatures to pull bodies from the rubble of thousands of buildings that have toppled throughout southern Turkey and northern Syria. The 72-hour mark since Monday’s magnitude 7.8 earthquake has now passed, a critical time window that experts say is when most survivors from disasters are found.
“The aftershock risk is greatest, essentially, right after the mainshock, but there will be noticeable aftershocks to this earthquake for years afterward,” says David Oglesby, a geophysicist at UC Riverside. “Right now, I can forecast for you that there will be many more aftershocks of magnitude 5, probably 6 or so, in this area. That’s an easy call to make, because historically speaking, statistically speaking, that’s almost guaranteed.”
Earthquakes are products of plate tectonics: Plates are great masses of rock that move independently in the earth’s crust, but contact each other along faults. The rocks are going to break in an earthquake and eventually the stress and strain will overcome the friction that is holding them together. “When the rocks break, they release energy in the form of waves, and those waves are what we feel as shaking.”
The mainshock Monday morning struck along some 125 miles of the East Anatolian Fault, a well-known fault line in southern Turkey. This earthquake was called a strike-slip because of stress built up between two rocks in opposite directions until the fault torn apart. It was shallow so it created more shaking at the surface. (The San Andreas Fault in California is also a strike-slip fault—that was the one that destroyed much of San Francisco in 1906.)
ANTAKYA and ISTANBUL, Turkey — Rescue workers in Turkey and Syria pushed into a third day of recovery operations on Wednesday as the death toll from this week’s massive earthquake reached a grim milestone.
A Child in a Box: The Search for Sedat in Syria During the First Day of the Second World War II. Turkey’s Emergency Management Agency
“I know my son is inside and I think he’s still alive. She told NPR that his brother dug with his hands to find him. Hours later, as diggers chipped away at the ruins of the building, rescuers found Sedat’s body and wrapped it in a blanket for his mother to say goodbye.
Aid groups consider the first 72 hours after a natural disaster as crucial for rescuing survivors. In neighboring Syria, the government blamed Western sanctions for being hard on relief efforts. Regardless, northern Syria lacks the heavy equipment and other infrastructure to come to the aid of the hundreds of thousands displaced by this disaster, and the only U.N.-authorized road from Turkey to that region has been damaged by the quake.
Dozens of countries have sent aid to Turkey, including over 5,000 rescue workers, due to the war in Syria.
More than 385,000 people have been displaced by this disaster, and Turkey’s emergency management agency has set up more than 70,000 tents for them to stay.
After the earthquake hit the city, rescue teams continued to search through the rubble as the day wore on.
The earthquake-torqued northwest of Aleppo, Idlib: rescuers and excavators say an elderly Syrian refugee is safely trapped in the rubble
The north and east Anatolian fault are two major ones that affect most of Turkey. The tectonic plate that carries Arabia, including Syria, is moving northwards and colliding with the southern rim of Eurasia, which is squeezing Turkey out towards the west, says David Rothery, a geoscientist at the Open University in Milton Keynes, UK. The East Anatolian fault is moving west by 2 centimetres a year. A lot of the fault is lit up by earthquakes.
Very few buildings in the city of Kahramanmaras have been left unscathed by the quakes, although those in mostly newer neighborhoods higher up the valley have suffered less obvious damage.
Things are worse in Syria, where more than 11 years of conflict have made building standards impossible to enforce. The earthquake struck Syria’s northwestern regions, with buildings collapsing in Aleppo and Idlib. 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 more readily than things that were built at somewhat greater expense. We haven’t found out yet.
Heavy machinery has been brought in to areas where people used their hands to dig through the rubble. The risk posed to those trapped alive must be weighed against their chances of surviving many more hours in the bitter cold.
The body of a 4-year-old girl wrapped in a pink blanket was brought out Wednesday from the wreckage of a building in the Turkish city of Kahramanmaras. She’s one of the latest young victims of Monday’s massive quake.
Elsewhere, excavators dug out the body of man believed to be a Syrian refugee in his 40s, who seemed to be on a mattress, like many of those who died after the quake struck around 4 a.m.
Rescuers were trying to reach one of the two people who are thought to be alive in a collapsed building. A generator was brought up to power a pneumatic hand-operated drill; the man directing it cleared away the rubble with his bare hands.
He appeared to have spotted some signs of life underneath the wreck, but rescuers said there was more work to be done.
There are 350 bodies in a hospital’s morgue that have not been collected by relatives because the family members have already died, according to a man who is volunteering at the hospital.
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Dabi and the Emergency Response to the 2006 Kahramanmaras-turkey-quake-rescue-efforts intl-cmd
The president of Turkey said that the survivors of the earthquake are faced with a great disaster. There is growing anger that the rescue response was taken too long, and Prime Minister Ahmet Dabi acknowledged shortfalls of his government after the earthquake. The president cited winter weather conditions and destroyed infrastructure, including airport runways, as complicating factors.
Flanked by officials, he visited an emergency relief area set up by the country’s disaster management agency, AFAD. Row after row of shining white tents could be seen in the sports stadium, destined to house some of the thousands of families who’ve lost their homes.
The government was to rebuild the Kahramanmaras region in one year and people would get help with emergency housing, said the prime minister in a broadcast from the relief center.
The president said that citizens can’t stay on the streets. “Our state is using all its resources with AFAD and municipalities. We will continue to do that.
He acknowledged the government’s initial response “had some problems” in terms of natural gas supply and roads, but said the situation was “under control.” He said the government will be giving 10,000 Turkish liras to families that have been impacted.
The felled buildings where people lived until disaster struck could be heard weeping and crying at the bottom of the city.
The photographs of loved ones who are under the rubble are less in prospect of being saved than as a remembrance, held out by a few and showing snaps of their children or wedding pictures.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/08/europe/kahramanmaras-turkey-quake-rescue-efforts-intl-cmd/index.html
“God is Great”: The earthquake-scatastrophe left behind in Turkey and the remnants of its war-torn region
A three month state of emergency has been declared in ten Turkish provinces and aid agencies warn of a catastrophe in northwest Syria, where millions of vulnerable and displaced people are already relying on humanitarian support.
Erdogan and aid workers said the scale of the quake was so large that it was difficult to reach everyone everywhere. The president said nobody would be left in the streets.
Istanbul’s stock exchange closed until Feb. 15 after initial trading showed rapid declines, triggering a circuit breaker when declines reached 7%. The Turkish economy was already reeling from out-of-control inflation.
The crowd chants “Allahu akbar,” which means “God is Great.” Volunteers and civil defense groups — themselves earthquake survivors — pull a boy out from the rubble alive in rebel-held northwestern Syria.
A day earlier, another video went viral showing volunteer rescuers in a different part of the rebel-held territory saving a family — two girls, a boy and their father — from under the rubble some 40 hours after the quake.
The world knows of these rescues because of Karam Kellieh, a resident and photojournalist who lives in the opposition-controlled territory. The area is home to some 4 million people displaced by the decade-long Syrian civil war. The area was ravaged by bombs and poverty before the earthquake. Politics and the Syrian government made aid hard to get.
Humanitarian aid has yet to appear 72 hours after the catastrophic earthquake, he said, describing the little help that is flowing into the region as a scramble by individual groups.
“Rescue efforts are being carried out by poorly equipped civil defense groups and civilians are trying to help,” Kelliah said. “Everyone’s waiting for international rescue and aid just to be able to process what’s happened, this catastrophe.”
The 11,000 families that were homeless after the earthquake are located in the rebel-held part of Syria. The United Nations says there have been at least 2,000 deaths and thousands of injuries.
“The situation remains grim in north-west Syria where only five percent of reported sites are being covered by search and rescue,” the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a report.
In northwestern Syria, where there is little heavy machinery to lift rubble, people are digging with their own hands. Power outages have resulted in fuel shortages in hospitals.