There were 12 families under there
A huge earthquake killed more than 2,200 people and injured thousands more on Monday in Turkey and northwest Syria, flattening apartment blocks and heaping more destruction on Syrian cities already devastated by years of war.
The magnitude 7.8 quake, which hit before sunrise in bitter winter weather, was the worst to strike Turkey this century. It was followed in the early afternoon by another large quake of magnitude 7.7.
Two of them. Massive ones, hours apart.
In the Syrian rebel-held town of Jandaris in Aleppo province, a mound of concrete, steel rods and bundles of clothes lay where a multi-storey building once stood.
“There were 12 families under there. Not a single one came out. Not one,” said a thin young man, his eyes wide open in shock and his hand bandaged.
God is great.
Horrible. It’s been a long time since I lived in Turkey, but my memory of that area is of lots of unreinforced masonry, and I don’t imagine it’s any different in Syria. Not good in an earthquake zone.
It’s difficult to think we might be responsible for earthquakes, but there are some activities of humans that do seem to be increasing quakes. However, along the North Anatolian Fault, I don’t think there’s a lot of reason to think it’s caused by us…it’s a dangerous fault line.
I watched a movie a few years ago (which for me could mean a decade or more, at my age) that effectively predicted this earthquake, though not to time, of course. It was just talking about the movement of the fault and where it would happen next.
It’s horrifying to think about. My husband told me first thing I got up this morning – he’d already been on CNN.
iknklast,
I remember being in Oklahoma City a few years back (and like you, that could mean a decade or more ago) and being surprised by the reports of earthquakes in the area. When I asked about it, our host explained that they were due to all the fracking going on.
But yeah, that area of the world is earthquake prone.
Making buildings earthquake-proof requires a lot of effort, but it can be done. Nowadays earthquakes in Chile cause much less damage than earthquakes of lower magnitude do in other countries. Talca was about the worst hit city in the earthquake of February 2010, with magnitude 8.8. We were there in November, and although the damage was there to be seen it was not all that obvious if you didn’t look for it. We spent the night in Itahue (where my wife has relations), a much smaller place about 30 minutes’ drive north-east of Talca, which had been about the worst-hit place of all: about 80% of it was destroyed and the rubble cleared away by the time we were there. It was unrecognizable as the place we had visited in the late1990s. However, the houses that resisted resisted well (including the one we spent the night in) and showed little damage. Aftershocks were still frequent, and there were three during the night, of magnitude about 5.5. I slept through two of them, and wasn’t much disturbed by the third.
WaM, maybe that was one of the weekends I was there visiting family – there were an incredible number of earthquakes during the week.
It isn’t just the fracking – it’s the injection wells. When I was coming home from that weekend, we were reading in the paper that the legislature of Nebraska was considering allowing injection wells in western Nebraska, for use by Colorado companies. It passed.
Ikn:
It’s obvious why the fracking and injection wells are so easily approved. Let’s face it. If not for occasional earthquakes what else is there for excitement in Oklahoma?
(ducks)
Tornadoes.
iknklast,
I think I knew about the injection wells at some point, but, well, every grey hair is a lost memory.
Good thing I don’t have many gray hairs, then, I am graying like my father; I might be fully gray by the time I’m ninety, if I follow his pattern. So a few lost memories, but not many yet.
Those poor people. As if they haven’t been dealing with enough, now they have to deal with this. What will we in the West do? Send out teams of expert builders to create earthquake-proof buildings for the survivors? Or continue to send weapons for the war?
Having experienced devastating earthquakes up close and personal, I feel real compassion. for those living in the area. in the immediate aftermath there is the grief for those killed and injured, the loss of homes and the infrastructure we take for granted. Just the general shock of the destruction of so much we consider permanent. The aftermath becomes a hard grind. Trying tome buildings safe, clean up areas for redevelopment, making new patterns in life. Our experience in Christchurch was that while there was a coming together in the aftermath, there was also a surge in depression, PTSD, worse health outcomes overall and, eventually, greater division between those who felt their needs and wants were don’t being met and those who had done ‘ok’ and just wanted to get on. It’s hard. it’s actually pretty shit. And that’s in a western nation with good resources. For those in war zones this is just a multiplier of misery.
Tigger, Turkey actually has a lot of expertise in both Siesmic research nd building design. Whether that has adequately found its way into practice is another matter. Turkey’s government has been pouring a huge amount of its dwindling resources into weapons research and building up a bigger and more effective military. Then again, with neighbours like Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, a decades long conflict with the Kurdish peoples, maybe that’s not entirely surprising.
I’m not even sure that the west supplies that much in the way of weapons to the Syrian conflict any more. Some certainly, but now that ISIS has largely been dealt with as a force that threatens US interests, the Syrian and Kurdish allies to the cause have been left hanging. Again. perhaps perversely, there is actually a case to be made in providing Syrian rebels greater military aid at this time. Dealing with this natural disaster will be an enormous drain on their resources, which were already stretched.
I’ve been thinking about this story a lot, today. This story could easily be about Seattle and Bellingham.
James, there are a LOT of places in western and moderately developed countries that are at risk from this kind of disaster. In a severe earthquake even some supposedly modern building designs can be expected to fail for one reason or another. poorly designed and constructed buildings can at in certain circumstances fail en mass as we have seen here. Much of the footage I’ve seen has been buildings pancaking, or the lower stories ‘sitting down’. When the buildings are concrete this is caused by some combination of poor quality concrete, insufficient primary reinforcing, or insufficient retaining cage reinforcing around columns. I haven’t seen any rotational failure footage, but I bet it’s happened somewhere.
It’s not just earthquakes either. Look at that apartment block in Florida that collapsed – probably due to foundation failure. I bet there is massive potential for that to happen regionally. Admittedly unlikely all to happen on one day.
to be clear, this stuff isn’t my expertise. I have some professional experience that is adjacent to this and spend a lot of time with people who are experts. On the other hand, living through this sort of event tends to make one obsessive about reading official reports and attending public lectures from experts. The privilege of having time and opportunity even after a disaster…