Another devastating earthquake is predicted on the same fault in Türkiye

2023-04-21 12:45:37

Archive – Building collapsed in Diyarbakir by the February earthquake – Mehmet Masum Suer/SOPA Images vi / DPA – File

MADRID, 21 Abr. (EUROPA PRESS) –

A section of the fault line from the February Turkey earthquake still intact and lockeda sign that the plates there can–when friction intensifies–generate another similar earthquake by giving way.

That’s the main finding of a new study led by the University of Southern California (USC) that has just been published in Seismica magazineand which predicts where another devastating new earthquake may occur.

Using remote sensing, USC geophysicist Sylvain Barbot and fellow researchers documented the massive February 6 earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in eastern Turkey and brought down more than 100,000 buildings.

“We know a little better what to prepare for. We don’t know the timing, but we know where it can happen,” Barbot said. it’s a statement.

Large earthquakes are caused by the sliding of tectonic plates. The plates, slowly moving pieces of the earth’s crust, press against each other, gradually building up force over decades, centuries, and eons. When the plates finally slide, the energy explodes in traveling waves through the earth’s crust.

The magnitude 7.8 Kahramanmaras, Turkey mainshock occurred on February 6, followed by a magnitude 7.6 aftershock on a separate fault further to the west. Another quake struck two weeks later, a magnitude 6.4 on February 20. A data plot shows seismic activity and the amount of slip along the faults.

The area below the Pütürge district of Turkey shows a swarm of seismic activity along the fault, but no slip. That means part of the glitch is blocked or stuck, but it’s likely to slip sometime, anytime, in the future.

“What we’ve seen in the photos of the buildings that collapsed is that some of them were pancakes, but some of them were literally pulverized,” Barbot said. “That means another degree of failure; even the concrete itself has disintegrated. There is a possibility that this quake produced more tremors than anticipated in the building codes. We won’t know without further investigation.”

“So, we have this region where we can expect a magnitude 6.8 earthquake and two things can happen from here. The population needs to be prepared for that. But also the scientific community because that gives us the opportunity to set up a monitoring experiment to see how an earthquake begins and ends.