More than 3400 killed in Turkey earthquake

They are pulling thousands of dead from the rubble in Turkey and Syria after the huge 7.8 earthquake in eastern Turkey.

 

It's over 4000 dead now. The video of so many buildings just collapsing in seconds is real scary! Some looked new.

 

Now over 5000 dead and 24,000 injured. How sad. Living on an active fault line or under an active volcano, or in a flood plain is ill advised. I guess you can also add next to the ocean as a big risk thanks to climate change.

I still can't get over the images of so many buildings collapsing...

 

Much metta to the people of Türkiye and Syria.

"Oh that my monk's robe were wide enough to gather up all the suffering people in this floating world."
Ryokan

 

Climate change is the least of one's worries for those next to the ocean. An earthquake on the floor of the ocean is a danger as such an event can kick up a wave. Also, something large plunging into the ocean - like a meteor or asteroid - could generate a similar event.

But climate change?? Come on.

 

Try to put them more in my thoughts and figure out the bigger picture or smaller later...

 

It looks like the final toll could be more than 50,000 dead. There's been hundreds of aftershocks. 25 million have been affected. A huge rift has opened in the ground.

 

Over 30000 people have died in Turkey alone.

From what I have read about the disaster, the toll is high due to largely avoidable factors.

One is the poor enforcement of regulatory measures with respect to building codes necessary for earth-quake prone Turkey. Corruption and haste in project completion for political reasons without adhering to due process were the reasons involved.

Also Erdogan's refusal to engage the army in rescue efforts due to the political rift between them, lead to lack of a large rescue force at hand which would have reduced the casualties substantially. In most countries the army is called upon to deal with a disaster of such scale.

Large sums of tax money gathered after the 1999 earthquake in Turkey for making buildings more resistant to earthquakes have also been unaccounted for, and seems to have been not put into any constructive use .

It also seems that inexperienced engineers straight out of university, were constructing the buildings without having the necessary experience and technical skill.

Erdogan's policy of fast infrastructure development for publicity reasons and to create a picture of progress in the minds of voters, seems to have backfired.

The more I see of Erdogan, the more my admiration and esteem of Kemal Ataturk increases.

 

The earthquake is a natural phenomena since the earth has been formed, and there is no way to eliminate it from our lifes. It is the responsibility of governments to have plan to build the resistable buildings. It is very simple, just look to the Japan's buildings and cities, there are an earth quicke every minutes which some of them are more than 4 or 5 magnitudes, but there is almost no casualties, or in California the situation more or less is the same as Japan. Unfortunately, the governments of many earth quicke regions are thinking about many things but people, most of them are dictators or involve with stupid conflicts, so there is no thinkable mind and no money to left for developing the countries. Just look at Turkey, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and many other countries where controlled by dictators, the situation are the same every year there are one or two major earth quicke which kil hundreds of thousands people, but the governments don't care, even they take advantages of thees
horrible situations.