Seismologists fear a tremor that struck a densely populated part of southeastern Turkey and was felt as far away as Israel and Cyprus was strong and shallow enough to be deadly on a devastating scale. Authorities in Syria and Turkey said at least 200 people have died and expect the death toll to rise.
The earthquake, which happened at 4:17 a.m. according to the United States Geological Survey, had a magnitude of 7.8. According to experts, tremors can be far more powerful, but what matters more than numerical magnitude is relative magnitude combined with location – whether many people live nearby – and depth, or whether a quake is shallow enough to cover a wide area hold true.
In a report released about 30 minutes after the earthquake, USGS experts said there was a 34 percent chance of 100 to 1,000 deaths and a 31 percent chance of 1,000 to 10,000 deaths.
“Significant damage is likely and the disaster is likely to be widespread,” the report said. It estimated the economic losses at up to 1 percent of Turkey’s gross domestic product.
Januka Attanayake, a seismologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said the energy released by the earthquake was equivalent to about 32 petajoules, enough to power New York City for more than four days.
“In terms of energy, the magnitude of 7.8 that occurred is 708 times stronger than a magnitude of 5.9,” he said, citing an earthquake in Melbourne, Australia, in 2021 that caused minor damage to the city became.
The magnitude of earthquakes is measured on a scale known as the local magnitude scale. An earlier version was known as the Richter scale. It’s a logarithmic scale: for each increasing whole number, the amount of energy released in an earthquake increases by about 32 times.
However, the potential damage from an earthquake depends on far more than its magnitude, as both the population density of a given area and the shallowness of the epicenter contribute to the extent of the devastation, with a shallower tremor holding the potential for more damage. This was about 10 miles deep.
Another important factor is the construction quality of the buildings in the area. “People in this region live in structures that are extremely vulnerable to seismic shock, although some resilient structures exist,” the USGS report noted, adding, “The predominant building types at risk are unreinforced brick masonry and low-rise, non-ductile concrete frames with infill.” Construction.”
In a post on Twitter, USGS seismologist Susan Hough said that while the quake was far from the strongest the world has experienced in decades, its location and shallow depth meant it risked becoming particularly dangerous .
At the lowest end of the scale, a magnitude 1 earthquake would be a micro-earthquake that is almost imperceptible to humans. Seismologists have described that a magnitude 7 earthquake “has an energy equivalent to about 32 Hiroshima atomic bombs,” said Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology The time in 2013.
With a magnitude of 7.8, the earthquake in Turkey is classified as a “severe” earthquake. Other tremors of similar magnitude are included a 2013 earthquake in Pakistanwhich killed about 825 people, and the April 2015 earthquake in Nepal that killed nearly 9,000 people.
This earthquake appeared to be one in a series, said Dr. Attanayake, the Melbourne seismologist. A long fault line of about 1,500 kilometers or 930 miles separating the Eurasian Plate to the north from the Anatolian Plate to the south had caused several earthquakes of magnitude 6.7 or greater since 1939.
