Less Fearful, More Active: The Marmara Earthquakes
The Turkish microplate is affected by movement of three different continental plates which causes frequent tremors and earthquakes. Diagram © UNICEF Turkey 2000
Disaster Strikes
In less than half a century, Turkey has had over twenty earthquakes registering more than seven points on the RS. The estimated total of deaths has been over one hundred thousand, most of them in rural areas. The country’s propensity for these natural disasters is due to the opposing movement of the Arabian/African and Eurasian plates, squeezing the Turkish micro-plate westward towards Greece. Fifty-six provinces and forty-five and a half million Turkish people are in the first and second high-risk areas for such disasters.
Following the first earthquake, this little girl and her family took refuge in the pre-fabricated city at Uzunçiftlik, İzmit.
Photograph by Rana Mullan
© UNICEF Turkey 2001
The Marmara Earthquakes
At three o’clock in the morning of August 17th, 1999, a tremor of between 7.4 and 7.8RS spread over an area of thirty thousand square kilometres to strike eight provinces in the industrial northwestern region of the country: the provinces of Yalova, Kocaeli, Sakarya and Bolu bore the brunt of the damage. The districts of Adapazarı and Gölcük, the epicentre, and the cities of İzmit, Yalova and Düzce lying within the ten thousand square kilometres high impact area were devastated. Another two provinces, Bursa and Eskişehir were affected to a lesser extent. İstanbul also suffered peripheral damage mainly in the district of Avcılar. More than one hundred and forty-five thousand houses and nearly twenty-two thousand service buildings were destroyed. Seventeen thousand one hundred bodies were recovered from the destruction along with forty-four thousand injured. The effects of the destruction were amplified by a rupturing of the infrastructure where roads and railways became unusable, water and sewage was cut and the electricity grid no longer functioned.
On November 12th, a second earthquake struck the Düzce province at six o’clock in the evening, registering 7.2RS at the epicentre in the town of Kaynaşlı. Losses were much lower at eight hundred and forty-five dead and just under five thousand injured, since most of the residents of Düzce and Bolu were already sheltering in tents on the surrounding plains. However, a hundred and twenty-four thousand buildings were razed by this equally devastating tremor.
How the tremors at Gölcük on August 17th and at Kaynaşlı on November 12th affected the northwestern Marmara region of Turkey. Diagram © UNICEF Turkey 2000
A further one thousand three hundred and ninety-one aftershocks, measuring between 2.4 and 5.2RS, were recorded between August 17th and December 14th, representing an average of twelve per day.
Prior to August 1999, the total population of the five worst hit provinces stood at two million six hundred thousand. Just under eighteen thousand deaths were recorded after November 1999 as a consequence of the earthquakes and, of more than six hundred thousand made homeless, four hundred thousand departed for safer parts of the country leaving two hundred thousand in the hardest hit provinces of Yalova, Kocaeli, Sakarya, Düzce (which became a province afterwards) and Bolu, living in tents and later, prefabricated housing.
The fully illustrated text of Less Fearful, More Active is also available for download in print-ready pdf format. [PDF 1.25MB]
Previous page
|
Next page