The problem is not really the earthquake. But here’s why I’m frustrated-even if we had told all of those people the day before, or the week before, and everyone got out safely, but all those buildings still collapsed, this would still be a humanitarian tragedy. The seismic hazard map for Turkey matches this earthquake perfectly. The East Anatolian Fault is moving and that’s going to produce a big earthquake every 100 or 200 years. The anger and the frustration comes from the fact that if you look at a seismic hazard map of Turkey-as seismologists, we have used earthquake recording, satellite modeling, and the geology to map where the faults are-we can tell what is moving. Q &A with Rachel Abercrombie The Brink: What was your reaction after this shocking news?Ībercrombie: I was trying to think, what am I feeling? Obviously, very sad. Why were the two earthquakes so catastrophic? To put their cascading devastation into context, The Brink spoke with Abercrombie about why the region is at high risk for earthquakes and what can be done to warn people about an impending shake before it’s too late. The president of the American Geophysical Union’s seismology division, she is also a coleader of a Southern California Earthquake Center research project which works to improve measurements of stress released by earthquakes. She has been studying earthquakes for over three decades, aiming to understand what makes some more severe than others, how they start, and what actually happens at the earthquake source. “Even if we had told all of those people the day before, or the week before, and everyone got out safely, but all those buildings still collapsed, this would still be a humanitarian tragedy,” says Rachel Abercrombie, a Boston University College of Arts & Sciences research professor of earth and environment. Courtesy of Mike Norton, Wikimedia Commons Two major faults, the North Anatolian Fault and the East Anatolian Fault, are gradually squeezing Turkey westward toward the Mediterranean Sea, putting the region at risk for earthquakes. Yet, many buildings in the region are not built to withstand large earthquakes, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), making the destruction worse. The two major fault lines surrounding it, the North Anatolian Fault and the East Anatolian Fault-which has a slip rate of between 6 and 10 millimeters per year-are gradually squeezing the country westward toward the Mediterranean Sea. Seismologists consider Turkey a tectonically active area, where three tectonic plates-the Anatolia, Arabia, and Africa plates-touch and interact with each other. Aleppo, a city in Syria that has been destroyed by civil war, also felt the brunt of the earthquakes. The epicenter of the quakes was near the city of Gaziantep, where there are currently hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. The double whammy of intense shaking collapsed thousands of buildings and killed over 20,000 people, leaving behind a humanitarian crisis in an already vulnerable area. Then, just nine hours later, a second quake-registered at 7.5 magnitude-struck the same region. It was the largest earthquake to hit Turkey in over 80 years. Around 4 am local time on Monday, February 6, two tectonic plates slipped past each other just 12 miles below southern Turkey and northern Syria, causing a 7.8 magnitude earthquake.
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