The abnormal movements of two major tectonic plates have caused devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. Photo: File
Anatolia, Turkey: It was four o’clock in the morning of February 6 that the most severe earthquake occurred in Turkey and Syria, and a large number of sleeping people were not only killed and many times more injured after the terrible earthquake, while a large number of people are now It is also buried under the rubble.
Experts from all over the world are considering the magnitude of this earthquake and the deaths caused by it. First, two large tectonic plates collided just 12 miles from southern Turkey and northern Syria, triggering a 7.8-magnitude earthquake, the deadliest in Turkey’s 80-year history. But nine hours later, another 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck the same area, adding to the death toll.
In this context, Dr. Rachel Abercrombie, a prominent expert on earthquakes and associated with Boston University, said that Turkey is a very active area in terms of tectonism. For example, this earthquake was caused by the North Anatolia Fault and the East Anatolia Fault, and the annual slip rate between the two was 6 to 10 mm. Due to this slippage, Turkey is sliding towards the Mediterranean Sea.
The center (epicenter) of this earthquake was the famous city of Gaziantep, where thousands of Syrian refugees who arrived here from the destroyed Syrian city of Aleppo are already living. According to the US Geological Survey (USGS), no building code was observed in the construction of buildings in this region. This is the reason why it has caused extraordinary casualties. However, Dr Rachael insists that even if the buildings could have been built according to the International Seismic Code, the disaster would have been minimally reduced because the earthquake was so powerful and its epicenter was shallow.
According to Dr. Rachel, a major earthquake in the East Anatolia Fault could happen every 100 or 200 years. According to him, one of the reasons for the unusual earthquakes in Turkey and Syria is the complex movement of plate tectonics, which is actually V-shaped as Turkey moves westward and Greece moves away from it.
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