ingilizce dilinden my heart goes out to everyone affected by the major earthquake in central turkey. as i stated earlier, sooner or later this would happen in this region, similar to the years 115 and 526. these earthquakes are always preceded by critical planetary geometry, as we had on 4-5 feb. çevirisi
ingilizce dilinden my heart goes out to everyone affected by the major earthquake in central turkey. as i stated earlier, sooner or later this would happen in this region, similar to the years 115 and 526. these earthquakes are always preceded by critical planetary geometry, as we had on 4-5 feb. çevirisi Ne90'dan bulabilirsiniz
Daily Sabah
Tuesday is the 22nd anniversary of one of the biggest earthquake catastrophes in Turkish history, which killed thousands in northwestern Turkey. But the country is not yet safe from tremors as powerful as the 7.4 magnitude quake that flattened towns on Aug. 17, 1999. Professor Ziyadin Çakır, a geology engineering expert from Istanbul Technical University (ITÜ), says the Marmara region, which was affected by the 1999 earthquake, still has fault lines despite having not been "impacted by any earthquake for a long time.”
“We expect earthquakes on some parts of those fault lines. As a matter of fact, there may be an earthquake that could reach 6.5 magnitude anywhere in Turkey at any time,” he warned.
His remarks echo the statements of many of his fellow earthquake experts in the country. Çakır says the country should focus on “preparations” against earthquakes instead of predicting the time of disaster.
The country is prone to such disasters as it is crisscrossed with active fault lines. Since 1999, it has witnessed more deadly earthquakes, from Van and Elazığ in the east to Izmir in the west. The last major earthquake, which hit Izmir in 2020 at a magnitude of 6.6, claimed 115 lives in the western province.
The 1999 earthquake was a stark warning for the country to get prepared for another “big one” and was followed by an overhaul of construction regulations and awareness campaigns. Some reinforced their houses against potential earthquakes while the government undertook an ambitious “urban transformation” campaign to demolish old buildings and replace them with sturdy ones. Çakır says Istanbul, the country’s most crowded city with a population of more than 15 million people, “luckily” has not seen any major earthquakes since 1999 but is still not “prepared” enough.
"The city’s building stock has been renewed since 1999, and public buildings from schools to hospitals were renovated and rebuilt. But it is still not on an ideal level,” he told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Monday. He said there were still hundreds of thousands of buildings in Istanbul constructed before the 2000s, and some were located on “unstable” ground. “Old buildings with more than five floors are particularly risky to reside in,” he warned. “I hope there won’t be a big earthquake in the next two decades and that all the old buildings will be transformed,” he said. “Istanbul is not directly located atop the fault lines. The nearest fault line is at a distance of 15 to 20 kilometers (9 to 12 miles). Still, I advise people not to buy any houses built before 2000,” he warned.
Figures vary on the damage that Istanbul will sustain in "a big one,” but, a report by the Urban Transformation and Urbanization Foundation (KENTSEV) says 491,000 buildings will suffer damage in a 7.5 magnitude earthquake in the city. More than 13,000 among them will sustain the “heaviest damage.” The figures show more than 6 million people live in those buildings. KENTSEV’s report says Fatih, a historic district on the city’s European side, will sustain the heaviest damage, ahead of Büyükçekmece, another district on the European side.
Nationwide, Turkey has experienced 300,000 earthquakes since 2010. Associate professor Bülent Özmen, an earthquake engineering expert at Gazi University, says in the first seven months of 2021 alone, 15,196 earthquakes were recorded, including six around magnitudes of 5.0 and 6.0. April had the highest number of earthquakes at 2,505, Özmen told AA. “The data we have shows the Earth’s crust has a continuing tension. We have nearly 1,000 active fault lines with a potential to generate earthquakes,” he said.
Yazı kaynağı : www.dailysabah.com
Daily Sabah
Professor Naci Görür, a geophysics expert, has described a stretch of Istanbul, Turkey’s most populated city, as sitting "within the bounds of hell” as he warned about a potential future earthquake.
The city that last suffered heavy damage from earthquakes in 1999 is on edge in light of the repeated warnings by experts about the anticipated "big one," an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 or higher.
Görür says the region stretching from the Golden Horn to the far-flung Silivri district on the European side of the city would sustain the most damage from tremors originating from a fault line some 9 kilometers (5.5 miles) off the coast of the Marmara Sea.
He points to potential fallout along a line extending 20 kilometers from the south to the north.
His comments came on Friday at a symposium on earthquake preparedness held in Avcılar, a district on the European side where the 1999 earthquake inflicted heavy casualties.
The epicenter of the 1999 earthquake was off the coast of Gölcük, a town east of Istanbul, originating some 80 kilometers away from Avcılar. Yet, the old buildings in the district succumbed to damage. Görür said it was not a coincidence, explaining that the geological structure of the region is susceptible to such disasters. “Most of the European side is under threat. Avcılar and (neighboring) Küçükçekmece districts are rich in streams and valleys and those only aggravate the impact of the earthquake. Avcılar sits on a ground composed of clay and limestone. In other words, the ground material is not very enduring,” he told the event.
Görür says there are no active fault lines on land, however, activity along the sea fault lines could trigger the inactive ones on land as well. “An earthquake at a magnitude of 7.2, for instance, can trigger landslides in an area from Küçükçekmece to Büyükçekmece,” he warned. The expert highlighted that an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 would inflict the equivalent amount of damage as 1.8 million tons of explosives. “Along with collapses, such an earthquake would cripple infrastructure and cause fires. So, it is not sufficient to simply rebuild sturdy buildings as protection. Authorities should allocate a budget for (better infrastructure) as well,” he said.
Yazı kaynağı : www.dailysabah.com
A disaster waiting to happen - why a huge earthquake near Istanbul seems inevitable
From the top of Turkey's tallest building, the panorama over Istanbul is stunning. The huge city sprawls and crawls over a thousand hills and ravines. The Bosphorus, separating Europe from Asia, threads north to the Black Sea. To the south, beyond the domes and minarets of the old city, the turquoise waters of the Sea of Marmara push west towards the Aegean. It's all laid out before you.
Draped in large letters across four floors of glass, steel, and stone, the bank that owns the 180-metre-high (590ft) building brags: "We are here forever."
It's a brave statement towering over a city that straddles one of the most active seismic faultlines on the globe. A few miles away beneath the Marmara Sea, the North Anatolian fault line is stirring, virtually certain to rupture within a generation at the latest and bring much of Istanbul tumbling down.
"It's not a problem, totally safe. They did their homework when they built this. This can take 8 points on the Richter scale or even more," said a man brandishing a machine gun at the gates to the bank tower.
Built in the heart of a bustling business quarter not likely to risk its fortunes on the sand and mud that are the foundations for the homes of the city's millions of poor, the tower probably is secured against natural disaster.
Switch on your television set, however, and a very different message hits you. In a highly effective ad, the word Istanbul appears in capital letters made of stone across the screen. As a magnitude counter below clocks up the decimal points, the word cracks and crumbles into dust. A voice warns: "Like it or lump it, there is going to be a big destructive earthquake in Istanbul."
The ad is selling steel-girded flats and houses ostensibly guaranteed to cope with anything the North Anatolian fault can throw at them. In the past month, the company has sold more than 60 flats and cannot keep up with demand.
"Maybe the advert's a bit scary. But we're dealing in facts," said Cuneyt Kilic, deputy director of the building firm. "We're just reminding people. You can't ignore this. All the experts say that a seriously big earthquake in Istanbul will definitely happen."
It is not a question of if but when. Every year under the sea, the southern slab of the fault pushes up from the Arabian peninsula, shifting the northern plate 2.5cm (one inch) towards Greece, a very fast rate of rupture.
Predictions
"It's inevitable, a certainty," said Professor Okan Tuysuz, director of the Eurasia Institute of Earth Sciences at the city's Technical University. "We know the scale. We know the place. We just don't know exactly when, but there's a 65% probability that Istanbul will be hit by a 7.6 earthquake by 2030. That's a very high probability."
This prediction is supported by a torrent of research in recent years that has highlighted the vulnerability of this city, which is one of Europe's biggest, and the challenges of being ready for such a natural disaster. With a population of up to 15 million, growing at an estimated 400,000 a year, and with 1.6m buildings, the effect of the gloom-mongering is to engender mass anxiety about life choices: where to live, how to afford it, how to get organised.
"I'm living in a safe area, very strong, earthquake-proof," said a successful middle-class professional in his 30s. "But I'm paying a very high rent. It's a simple equation here. The rents are high where the earth is strong."
Prof Tuysuz said: "The European side of Istanbul is built on soft rock, the north and the Asian side sits on hard old rock. That's why the rich have their villas in the Bosphorus area [in the north]."
Istanbul is a famously gloomy place, and psychologists say quake-phobia is compounding that mood.
"Many people are fatalistic, leaving everything to destiny. It's a way of ignoring reality and trying to cope with the anxiety," said Ibrahim Eke, a psychologist who spent three years counselling victims of the Izmit quake, which struck 60 miles east of Istanbul in 1999. "Others are active, organising street committees to stop bad car parking that could block exits from buildings, nailing furniture to walls and floors, organising fire precautions."
Since the fifth century, Istanbul has suffered serious quake damage 12 times, most recently at the end of the 19th century. More ominously, since 1939 there have been seven earthquakes with a magnitude of more than 7 points, all on the Anatolian fault and all marching westward from eastern Turkey in a linear progression to the gates of Istanbul.
Until 1999 the little that was known about the fault had come from geological surveying related to oil and gas prospecting and was quite misleading, according to the scientists.
All that changed with the Izmit earthquake. This and a second tremor three months later left almost 20,000 dead and 600,000 homeless. It also triggered an intense bout of geological investigations. The US Geological Survey, Italian, French, and Japanese experts, Turkish institutes and Swiss Re, a reinsurance company, all intensified their studies.
The research found that the problem was not, as previously believed, a series of small, separate faults under the Sea of Marmara, but a single 1,000-mile faultline running east to west. Each time a major rupture occurs on the faultline, it "transfers stress" further along the line, making a subsequent earthquake more likely.
"The results clearly indicate that the probability for a major earthquake hitting Istanbul in the near future is far greater than previously anticipated," reported Swiss Re.
It is not possible to predict precisely when an earthquake will strike. But more refined techniques are being used to produce more accurate probability predictions. A year after the 1999 earthquake, the US Geological Survey calculated there was a 62% chance of a major Istanbul earthquake within 30 years. In 2004, Tom Parsons of the survey team reported that the probability had risen to as high as 70%.
Istanbul is far from unique. San Francisco, Los Angeles and Japan are equally exposed to risk. But California and Japan are two of the wealthiest spots on the planet, built, structured, and organised to withstand the enormous jolt.
The World Bank is pouring hundreds of millions into Istanbul's quake readiness measures. The city authorities have tightened building regulations and there are calls to demolish tens of thousands of buildings. "The city is trying its best. But there's still an awful lot of illegal building going on," said Mr Kilic of the firm building the quake-proof housing.
"About 65% of buildings in Istanbul don't meet the rules and the city is growing too fast for anyone to be able to keep up. Things have improved, but not quickly enough to cope with the problem," said Prof Tuysuz.
Worst scenario
At his Earth Sciences Institute, Prof Tuysuz has ranked the city into five zones and is using computer models to develop scenarios for the impact of a 7.4-7.6 earthquake. At worst, he said, a 7.6 quake in the Sea of Marmara could hit 40% of the city, affecting up to 5 million people. A "mini-tsunami" up to seven metres high is also feared from the Sea of Marmara. Others talk of "only" 10,000 buildings being destroyed.
Mr Eke, the psychologist, said the most optimistic scenario was that a big earthquake would leave a minimum of 10% of the inhabitants gravely traumatised, meaning 1.5 million people.
Far to the west of the city in the district of Avcilar directly overlooking the Sea of Marmara, blocks of flats are emptying and For Rent signs are sprouting.
"There used to be rich people here," said Cetin Subasi, a waterfront tailor. "But anybody with money's moved out and poor people have moved in. They say this is the danger zone. I don't know. I've lived here 20 years. Maybe they're right or maybe they're wrong."
Backstory
Istanbul's long history as the capital of two empires before becoming the biggest city in modern Turkey means there is a wealth of historical data on earthquakes. Scientists have combed the records going back 1,500 years, establishing that the city has suffered "heavy damage" from 12 tremors The North Anatolian fault, one of the most active seismic zones in the world, runs within a few miles of the city under the Sea of Marmara. Since the disastrous Erzincan earthquake in December 1939 in eastern Turkey, there have been six earthquakes along the fault with a magnitude greater than seven points, all progressing from east to west. The most recent, in 1999, was less than 60 miles east of Istanbul.
Yazı kaynağı : www.theguardian.com
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