It looks like they got hit with two earthquakes on two different faults (where the first one likely triggered the second one.) This is a nightmare scenario. :(
How do you have an area of 2+ million people with no direct flights?
KevinC
2047
I can’t even comprehend an earthquake of that magnitude. My only experience with a quake was a 5.7 that hit just 3 or so miles from my home and it felt like someone had picked up the house and just started shaking it like mad, the whole place was vibrating and dishes were bouncing all around the cupboards.
I put that quake into the USGS calculator and it says this quake is 125x bigger and 1,412x stronger. I can’t even conceptualize what that is like to go through. Something like twice as strong or four times as strong? Sounds absolutely terrifying from what I experienced. But 1,412 times stronger?!
A little more on the situation in Syria.
The earthquake also heavily impacted north-west Syria, a region where 4.1 million people depend on humanitarian assistance today. The majority are women and children. At this time, Syrian communities are simultaneously hit with an on-going cholera outbreak and harsh winter events including heavy rain and snow over the weekend. The humanitarian response is largely overstretched with a funding gap of 48 per cent identified for the last quarter of 2022 (US$371.1 is required out of 802.1 million). The UN and partners are monitoring the situation on the ground amidst information flow constraints due to chronic telecommunication disruptions and power shortages. Infrastructural damages are difficult to assess at this time and roads have been reportedly blocked in both Türkiye and north-west Syria.
Not for scoreboarding, but the casualties are likely to surpass the 17,000 killed in the 1999 quake on their west coast.
Houngan
2051
Makes sense, they’re talking about 5,000 buildings collapsing, you have to figure that for every empty shop there’s a living structure with dozens or hundreds of residents, and it happened at night when people were home. I’d guess 20k-30k would be a reasonable, horrible result.
Saw some videos of buildings collapsing. It’s horrifying. It’s that Miami condo tower, except you know that this happened hundreds of times.
Im seeing some discussion that most of the destroyed buildings are not the taller or newer highrise residentials, but the midsize older 3-8 story buildings. Large numbers were built on the cheap in the decades before the 1999 quake and stricter codes.
That would make sense. Unfortunately, the number of outdated buildings almost certainly dwarfed the number of modern buildings.
Its also a nightmare for rescue and support services. Best case it might take a trained team of 20 a week to clear a collapsed building, but then you have thousands of structures pancake in a moment… and everyone knows in freezing conditions with no water, there are only days for rescue. There is no way to have the resources available, so this is a guaranteed millions of population irate that there was not help for them.
Wow; that’s terrible news, and awesome that that baby survived.
There are large numbers of uplifting rescue videos if you want them, but also a lot of desperate cries for help.
And lots of resources are starting to flow in, despite many small communities still not having any helpers.
This is truly apocalyptic. I cannot begin to image what these people are going through.
Some 100km to the south-east of Adana the scenes are even more apocalyptic. A fire is consuming the port of Iskenderun, a city on the Mediterranean coast, swallowing one shipping container after another and bathing the surrounding mountains in black smoke. Firefighters are nowhere to be seen. A gas station has fallen off a cliff edge. White tents housing those displaced by the quake sprout across the outskirts of towns.
Further south, Antakya, a city of 400,000 people that is the successor to ancient Antioch, resembles a city ravaged by years of war. In the city centre, practically every other building has been destroyed. Hunched over and covered with deep cracks, scores of other houses appear to be on the verge of collapse. Corpses pulled from the rubble, wrapped in carpets or blankets, line the main thoroughfare, alongside the wounded, waiting for ambulances. Volunteers and municipal workers distribute meals to hundreds of locals. A heavyset man, badly injured and stretched out on the sidewalk, struggles to remain conscious. “Stay with me,” yells his brother. “We still have so much to do together.” Military helicopters hover overhead.
(And at the risk of being a little too P&R, apparently Turkey is now starting to block Twitter.)
Hatay province around Antakya sounds bad.
Modern seismic standards are worthless in a culture of lax enforcement and corruption.
Houngan
2062
Oof. That pretty obviously failed right down the elevator shaft.
KevinC
2063
It wasn’t an elevator shaft, it was a zipper. :(
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