Closed airports, blocked roads, difficult weather conditions and aftershocks with magnitudes up to 7.6 are some of the conditions that make it difficult to rescue survivors in the earthquake that shook southeastern Turkey early Monday morning, area close to the border with Syria, which caused more than 1,500 deaths and 7,000 injuries.
He shock brought thousands of people out of bed on both sides of the border, with the quake knocking down buildings in a vast area of hundreds of kilometers that goes from the north of Syria, from cities like Aleppo, to the southeast of Turkey, where the largest Turkish city in the region, Diyarbakir, has been affected. The quake was also strongly felt in Lebanon, including Beirut.
The epicenter was in Pazarcik in Kahramanmaras province, according to the Turkish emergency service Afad, although the Kandilli seismic observatory locates it in Sofalici, in the neighboring province of Gaziantep, some 40 kilometers further south.
The low temperatures and the snow in the area, where there are also mountainous territories that are difficult to access, complicate the rescue tasks. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was in charge of announcing the latest balance of deaths and injuries in Turkey, although due to the fact that rescue work is underway he did not want to give a total number of possible victims.
“It is the second strongest since the 1939 Erzincan earthquake. According to the latest assessments it is 7.7. There is serious damage also in the neighboring areas of Syria,” said the Turkish president, confirming that there have been landslides or serious damage to more than 2,800 homes and that 2,470 people have been rescued alive from the rubble.
In Syria, embroiled in more than a decade of civil war, the affected area is divided between territory controlled by Bashar al-Assad’s government and the last opposition-controlled enclave of the country, which is surrounded by Russian-backed government forces.
The earthquake is the most serious registered in Turkey so far in the 21st century. The deadliest in the last 50 years, also at 7.4, was recorded on August 17, 1999 with its epicenter in Izmir, in the northwest of the country, and left some 17,000 dead, 500,000 homeless, 45,000 injured and 15 million of affected.
The one this morning is also the second strongest earthquake in 100 years, after the one that struck Erzincan, in eastern Turkey, on December 26, 1939, 7.8. That earthquake left more than 32,000 dead and caused a tsunami in the Black Sea, located about 160 kilometers from the epicenter.
Until today’s earthquake, the last one that had caused more than a hundred deaths in Turkey occurred on October 30, 2020, with 6.8 and epicenter in the Aegean Sea, 60 kilometers south of the city of Izmir. In total, 115 people died and more than a thousand were injured in Turkey and another two perished on the Greek island of Samos.
During the last 50 years there is no precedent in Syria for an earthquake that has caused as many victims and damage as the one registered today.
This is the list of the most serious earthquakes suffered by Turkey in the last 50 years, which caused more than a thousand deaths:
6 September 1975: 3,000 people die after a 6.8 earthquake occurred in Lice, in Anatolia (Turkey).
November 24, 1976: More than 4,000 dead in a 7.6 earthquake in the province of Van, near the border with Iran, which caused the greatest damage in Caldiran and Muradiye.
October 30, 1983: A 7.1 earthquake leaves more than 1,300 dead in Erzurum, in eastern Anatolia.
August 17, 1999: A 7.4 earthquake with its epicenter in Izmir, in northwestern Turkey, which is also felt in Istanbul, leaves some 17,000 dead, 500,000 homeless, 45,000 injured and 15 million affected.
November 12, 1999: A 7.2 earthquake with its epicenter in Duzce, in the northwest of the country, causes around 900 deaths and almost 5,000 injuries. The most affected populations were Bolu, the provincial capital, Kaynasli and Duzce.