Terrible News Today.
I’m hearing some estimates of more than Ten Thousand presumed dead. Several powerful after shocks have also been felt.
Poor people.
The shocks have been felt as far south as Israel - my wife’s office building in Tel Aviv was evacuated.
I’m so sorry, I just realized I didn’t use the correct spelling for Turkiye. I will ask a mod to correct it.
I don’t see where you tried to spell the native name, but that’s Türkiye (تركیه)
My question is, what magnitudes of earthquakes are those reinforced-concrete buildings designed to withstand?
Here’s background on the request for the updates spelling
Al Jazeera says they were hit by a second major quake
Thousands wounded, many trapped as rescue operations continue in both countries. Turkey-Syria earthquakes live: 2,300 dead; rescue efforts ongoing | Earthquakes News | Al Jazeera
Warning: al Jazeera often starts up with video, including sound. But they are pretty good for news from that part of the world.
They are reporting more than 1800 dead, and rescue efforts underway to rescue those still alive under the rubble.
Is that script still in use in Türkiye?
Ars technica has a map of shocks (including a 7.5 aftershock) 2200 year old Gaziantep Castle (which I would assume has encountered previous quakes) received significant damage.
Brian
I have a bad feeling about this. Building codes in that neck of the words are not the best.
Not since the Ottoman Empire! However, the modern name can be regarded as a modernisation/transliteration of the Ottoman name. Or what @puzzlegal posted; in any case u ≠ ü in Turkish.
Yeah, that area has a lot of unreinforced masonry construction, some of it centuries old. Unreinforced masonry is really bad in earthquakes.
Turkey has been slowly updating its building codes since the 1999 earthquake, and earthquake insurance has been mandatory for a while. The former frankly doesn’t help much, it takes too long to bake in, but at least most folks will have financial help.
The whole thing is very depressing.
The standards there are likely not the same as in the west. In fact, I’d be surprised if there were any enforced codes at all in that neck of the woods. Perhaps in Istanbul, but along the border I doubt that rebar is plentiful, and that what little is used in the buildings is inadequate to the task.
Also, one has to expect that the concrete may not be mixed to adequate PSI strength, nor always properly placed/cured, and the aggregate in the mix may be sandstone or something else inadequate to the task. For example, on a multi-story building in the west, you do NOT place concrete in more than a 3’ lift, as doing so will cause the aggregate to sink to the bottom. We had to stop Egyptian workers who were attempting to do a 12’ lift on the new embassy building in Cairo.
The 9.2 1964 earthquake in Anchorage caused significant structural damage to many buildings, but none of them collapsed like the ones we’re seeing on the news. That’s because proper construction specs were used to build them.
And it is still getting worse. Earthquakes are like that, more bad news comes in when communications are reestablished.
Yeah. They’ve counted 5,000 dead so far, but they think the actual number could reach 20,000.
Some of the video is just heartbreaking. Well, I suppose pretty much all of it is. The weather is just adding to the misery. There is a video this morning of a woman on her phone begging for help and she is buried under so much rubble, it makes me feel guilty to be sitting in a warm comfortable place.
My eldest just found out he’s been reassigned. He’ll be delivering relief supplies to the area for at least the next month or two. He’s looking forward to it, saying he enjoys his job, but this adds additional significance.
Well I thank him for helping with a glad heart. I pray he remains safe and that he is uplifted by the help he is able to render.
It’s awful. And it looks like some of the collapsed buildings are right next to ones that appear to be OK, so at least some buildings, perhaps ones build in recent years, were good enough. As if this region needed this, another kick in the nethers.
Sometimes it’s just a matter of dumb luck. You can have two identical buildings, one next to the other, and one will collapse while the other one won’t.