Earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis

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Thankfully, it's nowhere near the magnitude of the 2011 earthquake. Still, it's like the universe ran out of ideas on how to screw with the 2020 decade so it's resorting to remakes.
Indeed, but 7.3 is what Japan got two days before the 9.0 of 2011.
Better with sound:
 


7.8 in the south of Turkey. There is a lot of damage.

Edit. 7.7 at 14.00 local time, a bit more to the north.
 
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Casualties have reached 1000 its going to increase 🥲

Also the earthquake hit Syria with reports of 500 people killed.

Destruction was pretty severe.

Turkiye has always been a earthquake prone zone just like Japan. Unfortunately no investments were done to put building standards up to proper standards while doing anti earthquake proofing also the apartments and their stories need to be limited.

This is a long term problem country has been hit with so many earthquakes none of the past and current administrations have done nothing to minimise the damage. I know its natural disasters because we have no control of it.

Im sad also angry. I see the Japanese as the perfect example on how they can handle earthquakes.

Rest in peace my condolences to the people of Turkiye and Syria.
 
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Some early damage seen:

Perhaps the natural weathering finally weakened that castle to where it couldn't take the punishment anymore. But this area doesn't seem prone to earthquakes? When I think of earthquake hotspots around the world this area doesn't pop up on my list.
 
Perhaps the natural weathering finally weakened that castle to where it couldn't take the punishment anymore. But this area doesn't seem prone to earthquakes? When I think of earthquake hotspots around the world this area doesn't pop up on my list.
This area is definitely prone to earthquakes. The region has seen many quakes in the past damage historical buildings. The Colossus of Rhodes, Lighthouse of Alexandria and Mausoleum at Halicarnassus were all felled by earthquakes over the millennia.
 
Some early damage seen:

Some parts of it are still standing.
1675700583236.png
 
Perhaps the natural weathering finally weakened that castle to where it couldn't take the punishment anymore. But this area doesn't seem prone to earthquakes? When I think of earthquake hotspots around the world this area doesn't pop up on my list.
They sit between 3 plates. African, Arabian and Eurasian, so they are pretty much in the thick of it.
 
The missus' half-sister is stuck in a village near Kahramanmaras, pretty much the epicenter of the first quake, luckily no one is seriously injured in the family, as far as we know now.
 
Casualties have reached 1000 its going to increase 🥲

Also the earthquake hit Syria with reports of 500 people killed.

Destruction was pretty severe.

Turkiye has always been a earthquake prone zone just like Japan. Unfortunately no investments were done to put building standards up to proper standards while doing anti earthquake proofing also the apartments and their stories need to be limited.

This is a long term problem country has been hit with so many earthquakes none of the past and current administrations have done nothing to minimise the damage. I know its natural disasters because we have no control of it.

Im sad also angry. I see the Japanese as the perfect example on how they can handle earthquakes.

Rest in peace my condolences to the people of Turkiye and Syria.
It makes me sad. It's sad to see unreinforced masonry construction still such a dominant type in regions like this (including Iran, Iraq, Mexico, etc). It just will fail in earthquakes - almost zero resistance to lateral acceleration. Japan has traditionally done well because they've built with wood...also why you don't see such bad outcomes (anymore) in seismic zones in the US and Canada...its either all wood or reinforced concrete.
 
It makes me sad. It's sad to see unreinforced masonry construction still such a dominant type in regions like this (including Iran, Iraq, Mexico, etc). It just will fail in earthquakes - almost zero resistance to lateral acceleration. Japan has traditionally done well because they've built with wood...also why you don't see such bad outcomes (anymore) in seismic zones in the US and Canada...its either all wood or reinforced concrete.
They just pour concrete and call it a day. Even the new buildings built have collapsed.

The Ottoman Empire to combat earthquakes even tried to earth quake proof their buildings the Byzantines too.

Lots of corruption also standards not being enforced when buildings are built. Lots of shortcuts are taken too.

Its a long term problem.

3500 people are dead and its set to increase. While in Syria 1000 people have died while its also set to rise as Syria also suffered heavy damage not to mention you have a civil war along with refugee camps.

We are looking at a humanitarian crisis.
 
The Geological Survey of Estonia confirms that yesterday's earthquake in Turkey was so powerful that it was measured by all seismological stations in Estonia.
The photographs below show Sarghaua (SRGE), Vasula (VSU) and Piusa (EE07) seismograms as an example. Vasula is also part of the GEOFON global seismological observation network of the Geosciences Center Potsdam, which is used to quickly analyze large-scale earthquakes.

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Dashcam from inside a car. The buildings...jesus. They just start falling, pure insanity. Anybody in a car is probably among the luckiest people in the world, I bet that'd be the safest place to be.

 
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There's a good chance corruption caused a lot of that.
I'm not sure what the root cause is but there are a lot of countries prone to earthquakes which either don't have the wealth to build to earthquake standards or just don't have the standards at all. A country like Turkey especially has very old urban areas where it would take a tremendous amount of time and money to either retrofit or rebuild literally everything. That white and gray building looks newer and is still standing minus a bit of fascade. Some of those other buildings may have been built before proper earthquake contruction tech developed.
 
I'm not sure what the root cause is but there are a lot of countries prone to earthquakes which either don't have the wealth to build to earthquake standards or just don't have the standards at all. A country like Turkey especially has very old urban areas where it would take a tremendous amount of time and money to either retrofit or rebuild literally everything. That white and gray building looks newer and is still standing minus a bit of fascade. Some of those other buildings may have been built before proper earthquake contruction tech developed.
They've built plenty of buildings that are supposed to be at least made of decent quality reinforced concrete after the 1999 earthquake and the 2008 new building codes, but as is usual with politicians, making yourself and your friends richer is more important than actually serving those who voted for you.
 
There's a good chance corruption caused a lot of that.
That typically laissez-faire attitude to building regulations which, to be fair, is largely seen throughout the mediterranean, can be considered a contributing factor. Sadly.
 
A member of my online quiz team emigrated to Turkey. She seems to be optimistic about the stability of newer buildings:

"The problem with older cities such as Gaziantep is that a lot of buildings pre-date the 1999 Izmit quake, which led to the building regs, for new buildings, to be dramatically changed. Looking at the pictures from Gaziantep, the more modern high rise buildings seem to have remained relatively undamaged, although they are very close to buildings reduced to rubble.

"The Fethiye area is IRO 75% newer build. We've had 2 "biggies" since I moved here, without any serious injuries (from memory 2 with broken legs after they'd jumped from balconies), no deaths & minimal structural damage."
 
A member of my online quiz team emigrated to Turkey. She seems to be optimistic about the stability of newer buildings:

"The problem with older cities such as Gaziantep is that a lot of buildings pre-date the 1999 Izmit quake, which led to the building regs, for new buildings, to be dramatically changed. Looking at the pictures from Gaziantep, the more modern high rise buildings seem to have remained relatively undamaged, although they are very close to buildings reduced to rubble.

"The Fethiye area is IRO 75% newer build. We've had 2 "biggies" since I moved here, without any serious injuries (from memory 2 with broken legs after they'd jumped from balconies), no deaths & minimal structural damage."
You dont even want to know how much shortcuts get taken.

Some buildings may be built properly but not all not to mention you have lots of old buildings.

Its a mix and mash of buildings the city planners just prefer building big apartments rather than making a suburb.

What is important are the materials.

But the construction companies are corrupt to the core many have contacts in the government itself.

They have learnt nothing in 1999. No long term plan from the current government neither did the past governments do anything about it.

Its just thoughts and prayers from now on.
 
Over 17,000 now reported dead, mostly in Turkey. The first aid convoys are reaching Syria today (?!), though much of the affected areas looked like they'd be hit by an earthquake already.

The destruction in Turkey could and should have been far less than it was - the earthquake that rocked Japan in 2011 was 89 times more powerful, and yet there was nothing like the structural damage caused by the quake itself in Japan. Alas, of course, the resulting tsunami caused ca. 20,000 deaths, but very few deaths were directly attributable to the earthquake itself.
 
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Dashcam from inside a car. The buildings...jesus. They just start falling, pure insanity. Anybody in a car is probably among the luckiest people in the world, I bet that'd be the safest place to be.


Wow so many soft-story failures. Likely zero or poorly developed rebar connection between the columns and the slabs and zero shear walls. I'd guess that the columns just disconnected/sheared from the second floor slab. The first story just collapses and then the rest of the building goes with it.

You really need a stiff building when you are building with concrete because its heavy. You can see in this clip that the upper stories are moving in unison and have a ton of inertia. Without the base being very stiff there is just too much lateral load for simple columns to resist. You need relatively long, solid, and thick concrete walls (shear walls) in both directions that are well connected to the horizontal assemblies to resist this kind of lateral force.

Seismic retrofits are very expensive and if they aren't mandated they don't get done. The newer buildings should have faired much better but a lot of that is down to code enforcement. How many code inspectors in Turkey are doing their job?
 
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It seems that Iceland is getting ready for a new volcano to go poof. There have been a lot of earthquakes the last week.
 
Apparently because of global warming, the glaciers on Iceland are melting, allowing the magma to heat up more. Which results in more activity.
 
There's been like four different large volcanoes becoming active in the past week alone

Iceland


Italy


Japan


Mexico




This Forbes article mentions many more smaller volcanoes

 
p78
Apparently because of global warming, the glaciers on Iceland are melting, allowing the magma to heat up more. Which results in more activity.
There's been like four different large volcanoes becoming active in the past week alone
Expecting right-wing commentators to start calling them 'woke-anoes' in 3, 2, 1....
 
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