This Monday the earth trembled in southern Turkey, causing a 7.7 magnitude earthquake, which was followed by numerous aftershocks, and another 7.6. The balance is catastrophic. There are already more than 5,000 people who have died between the Turkish country and neighboring Syria.
Turkey is, due to its geographical position, an area of high seismic activity. Most of the country falls on the anatolian platecaught between several that can exert pressure from various fronts and, therefore, cause large earthquakes like those that occurred this Monday.
In the year 2022 alone, Turkey recorded more than 20,000 earthquakes. Of them, almost 130 exceeded magnitude 4 on the Richter scale.
An earthquake is produced by a strong vibration of the earth’s crust, derived from the release of energy in the form of seismic waves when two tectonic plates collide. Therefore, the places with the greatest seismic risk are those that are located in the border zone of one tectonic plate with another.
Most of Turkey is located on the anatolian plate, located in turn between two large platforms, the Eurasian and the African, and a third smaller plate, the Arabian. This causes several faults to cross the country, thus favoring the possibility of large tremors.
The most dangerous, where the Turkic and Eurasian plates coincide, runs through the north of Turkey, passing very close to Istanbul. In fact, the recurring fear among experts is that this large city in Turkey could at some point again suffer a potentially devastating earthquake like the one it suffered in 1999, which claimed the lives of 17,000 people throughout the country.
On this map you can see which have been the deadliest earthquakes that have taken place since the year 1900. One of the most dangerous strips is the one that precisely takes place between Turkey and China.
In America, there are two clearly defined risk zones. One is that of the Andes mountain range. Chili is unfortunately used to suffering strong earthquakes and it is worth remembering the one that suffered Peru in 1970, of magnitude 7.8, with a balance of almost 67,000 deaths. On the same continent, the caribbean area It has also suffered major earthquakes, such as the magnitude 7 earthquake that devastated the island of Haiti in 2010 and left more than 220,000 dead.
All the countries that are located in the Middle East area suffer periodic earthquakes, as is the case of Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iran. China has also suffered some of the most catastrophic earthquakes in history, such as the one that occurred in 1976, with a magnitude of 7.8, and which has left the highest death toll on record, with 242,800. Very similar was the death toll caused by the most powerful earthquake ever recorded, the one in December 2004 in the Indian Ocean, which reached magnitude 9 and also caused a tsunami that devastated Indonesia.
Another archipelago that often suffers from the onslaught of the earth is Japan. The worst on Japanese soil occurred in 1923, with a magnitude of 7.9, and caused more than 142,000 deaths.
