![]() They are designed based on the level of risk that society is willing to accept. How much do building codes help in the event of a major earthquake?ĭashti: Turkey has a modern building code, but even modern building codes don't guarantee zero damage. It makes it a lot harder for them to recover. That makes the impact of the destruction much worse. In Southeastern Turkey, on the border with Syria, there is also a large population of refugees who are already highly marginalized. The damage can kill more people when they're at home. The timing of this earthquake, unfortunately, was 4 a.m., when people were home and asleep. Liquefaction is when soil that is sturdy and strong under normal circumstances starts to act like a liquid during an earthquake. The region is also prone to the risk of seismic liquefaction and landslides. The large number of very strong aftershocks can also destroy buildings already weakened by the first event. The epicenter here was very shallow, which means that the intensity of the ground shaking can make the earthquake more damaging. ![]() ![]() Depending on where you are in the world and how buildings are constructed, buildings can collapse like we've seen in Turkey.ĭashti: Magnitude is not the only thing that determines the level of damage. Mueller: When earthquakes of this magnitude happen near a populated region or in an urban center, they're going to cause tremendous destruction. What made this earthquake so destructive? The last event of this size around the same area in Turkey was in 1939. ![]() Yet the kind of magnitude that we observed for the main shock and the aftershock is rare anywhere in the world. This is a very active region seismically. Although the plate motions are different, the type of displacement and magnitude of the earthquakes in Turkey are similar to what is forecast for the San Andreas in Southern California.ĭashti: These events were within the East Anatolian fault system, which is at the boundary between three tectonic plates: the Arabia, Africa and Anatolia plates. Plates can collide with one another, such as between Arabia and Anatolia or they can slide sideways, such as on the San Andreas Fault. The crust along plate margin stores elastic energy until is it released as sudden movement during earthquakes. Mueller: The outermost layer of the Earth is comprised of constantly moving tectonic plates that collide or slide along one another. Mueller and Dashti discuss what researchers can learn from the earthquake and how California can prepare for the inevitable. She examines how infrastructure responds to natural disasters and is working with colleagues in Turkey to send a team to the country to record the devastation there. ![]() Shideh Dashti is an associate professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering and acting associate dean for research in the College of Engineering and Applied Science. Karl Mueller is a professor of geological sciences who studies fault systems and the earthquakes that occur in them. Experts, however, say the geology underlying Turkey and Syria shares a lot in common with the West Coast of the United States-especially California where the San Andreas Fault stretches almost 750 miles from the northern to southern part of the state. For many Americans, the devastation might seem far away. ![]()
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