Media reports - February 11, 2023
Death toll from Turkey-Syria earthquake surpasses 25,000
The death toll from Monday's devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria is continuing to climb, surpassing 25,000 as of late Saturday, United Press International reported.
The UPI quoted the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials as saying that more than 80,000 people were injured as of 7:30 p.m. local time stemming from the 7.7 and 7.6 magnitude earthquakes which struck early Monday morning.
Nearly 2,000 aftershocks also hit the region with more than 13 million people across 10 provinces affected in some way.
At least 1,000 Syrians who were in the region of southern Turkey along the border are also among the dead. Their bodies are being taken back to Syria by truck for burial, officials said.
The Associated Press/Nexstar Media Grop reported Saturday:
Rescue crews on Saturday pulled more survivors, including entire families, from toppled buildings despite diminishing hopes as the death toll of the enormous quake that struck a border region of Turkey and Syria five days ago surpassed 25,000.
Dramatic rescues were being broadcast on Turkish television, including the rescue of the Narli family in central Kahramanmaras 133 hours after the 7.8-magnitude temblor struck Monday. First, 12-year-old Nehir Naz Narli was saved, then both of her parents.
That followed the rescue earlier in the day of a family of five from a mound of debris in the hard-hit town of Nurdagi, in Gaziantep province, TV network HaberTurk reported. Rescuers cheered and chanted, “God is great!” as the last family member, the father, was lifted to safety.
Melisa Ulku, a woman in her 20s, was extricated from the rubble in Elbistan in the 132th hour since the quake, following the rescue of another person at the same site in the same hour. Ahead of her rescue, police announced that people shouldn’t cheer or clap in order to not interfere with other rescue efforts nearby. She was covered in a thermal blanket on a stretcher. Rescuers were hugging. Some shouted “God is great!”
Just an hour earlier, a 3-year-old girl and her father were pulled from debris in the town of Islahiye, also in Gaziantep province, and soon after a 7-year-old girl was rescued in the province of Hatay.
Sufferings in Syria
The disaster compounded suffering in a region beset by Syria’s 12-year civil war, which has displaced millions of people within the country and left them dependent on aid. The fighting sent millions more to seek refuge in Turkey.
The U.N. refugee agency estimated that as many as 5.3 million people have been left homeless in Syria.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, arrived in Syria’s northern city of Aleppo on Saturday, bringing with him 35 tons of medical equipment, state news agency SANA reported. He said another plane carrying an additional 30 tons of medical equipment will arrive in the coming days.
The opposition Syrian Civil Defense, also known as the White Helmets, said Saturday that it “is almost impossible to find people alive.”
The total death toll in Syria’s northwestern rebel-held region has reached 2,166, many of them women and children. The total dead in Syria was 3,553, while in Turkey, officials counted 21,043 dead through Saturday.
https://wgntv.com/news/earthquake-death-toll-tops-25000-in-turkey-syria-some-survivors-still-being-found/
Daily Sabah – February 9, 2023
Accumulated tension of hundreds of years moved Anatolia by 3m
Professor Harold Tobin, professor in the Department of Earth Sciences at Washington University and director of the Northwest Pacific Seismic Network, explained the magnitude and nature of the earthquakes in Kahramanmaraş, which affected 10 provinces.
Stating that his father spent five years of his childhood in Istanbul and Ankara during his doctorate, Tobin said that one of the areas he worked on was the Anatolian Fault Line.
He outlined that Türkiye is one of the most earthquake-prone countries, and these pair of earthquakes in Kahramanmaraş were really big. "These are not only the largest earthquakes we have experienced in recent years in Türkiye but also the largest earthquakes in the world in the last century or more in residential areas," Tobin said.
"Earthquakes were expected in this region, but the magnitude of the earthquake was greater than predicted," he said.
"I don't think such a big earthquake on the Eastern Anatolian Fault Line has ever happened in history. The aftershocks affecting other regions on the fault line, just nine hours later, was highly unprecedented. Connected to a completely different line. This line was also known before, but earthquakes of this magnitude weren't.
"Unfortunately, the combination of these two is a terrible tragedy. The first earthquake caused a lot of damage but the second shake devastated the whole area," explained.
Referring to the information that the Anatolian plate slipped by 3 meters (9.84 feet) after the earthquakes, Tobin said that Anatolia was stuck between two fault lines. "In an earthquake that occurred hundreds of years later, centimetric movements turned into meters."
Tobin explained the scientific facts behind the landslide. “Africa is moving north, Saudi Arabia is pushing the country east, which makes the plates move very slowly. This movement is centimetric every year, but these plates are stuck between fault lines. You know what happens when you try to push a heavy piece of furniture, first it resists, it doesn't move. This creates tension in the earth's crust but then releases all its energy in a minute or so when an earthquake occurs. A few meters of movement occurred along these fault lines. This was the accumulated tension of hundreds of years of plate tectonic movements."
Similar earthquakes had previously been seen in Japan in the 1940s and Indonesia in 2004 and 2005, but there were months between the occurrence of earthquakes "However, two earthquakes of this magnitude in less than 24 hours were almost unprecedented. It's been a very, very long time, and I guess we haven't seen anything like this since the invention of seismological instruments," he said.
https://www.dailysabah.com/turkey/accumulated-tension-of-hundreds-of-years-moved-anatolia-by-3m/news
|
Published since July 2008 |
Your donation
is tax deductable.
The Journal of America Team:
Editor in chief:
Abdus Sattar Ghazali
Senior Editor:
Prof. Arthur Scott
Special Correspondent
Maryam Turab
