update3: More than 30,000 dead in Turkey and Syria after major earthquakes

A shocking number but not terribly surprising. I hope the Turkish government turns it around, but I'm not optimistic even given though it's inevitable that they will be hit by another quake of this magnitude.

 

Any building code is only as good as it’s enforced. Unfortunately Turkey isn’t know for having the cleanest government so not surprised that funds after the last large quake haven’t gone to improving buildings.

That also was a major scandal that came out of the 2007 Sichuan Earthquake in the PRC. A lot schools on that one collapsed and it turned about that contractors were building concrete schools without steel rebar in them. They were pocketing the money.

 

The log magnitude scale is so hard to wrap your head around -- I was reading the 7.8 had about 40-60% more energy than the 7.5. The jumps in power as you move up the scale is wild.



Edit: GTP tells me the 40-60% increase was way off...

The energy released by an earthquake increases by a factor of 10 for each unit increase in magnitude on the Richter scale. This means that a 7.8 magnitude earthquake releases about 31.6 times more energy than a 7.5 magnitude earthquake.

In terms of percentage, this means that a 7.8 magnitude earthquake releases approximately 3,160% more energy than a 7.5 magnitude earthquake.

 

...lava tsunamis

 

That is amazing how much displacement is from this earthquake. To put it in relatable turns imagine the middle of your house shifting by the width of an average bedroom.

 

Now over 20,000.

UN convoy just now entering Syria from Turkey. That's key because the Syrian government wanted aid to go through Syria and get to the affected areas from the south, given the Syrian Civil War and rebel strongholds where the quake hit. Need to open more Turkey to Syria routes for response and aid.

 

If these are rebel held areas the Syrian National government probably doesn't have much say in how aid gets there. Also from what I recall Turkey maintains a buffer zone inside Syria and has attacked both the Russian and Syrian forces when they've gotten too close.

It's good seeing aid get there. One thing I was wondering about is if these are Kurdish held areas and given Turkish hostility to Kurds if they would be tempted to block aid.

 

Was talking to a friend about the damage caused by the earthquake. Here is a video of me in Port Au Prince talking about the damage there from th2 2010 earthquake. From what I've seen of the videos some of the construction might be similar.

 

S&R teams just now reaching the epicenter.

 

Nice, except that graphic is laughably untrue.

For instance, right smack in the middle of that gap was the Mexico City quake in 1985 - which was 8.0. There have been others.

 

Building built since 2000 have crumbled as well. Corruption is a huge problem. One of the reasons my father left India was because the local mafia was putting pressure on him to ok cutting corners in the mixing of the concrete (he was a civil engineer). He refused and they sent goons at him one night but he was able to scare them off with a pick axe. That is what made him decide to immigrate to the U.S.

Modern buildings should not collapse to a 7.8 quake. Yet they do. And that's because of corners being cut. How many died because of that? Ridiculous.

 

I'm kinda shocked there's not more fires

 

Corruption is a problem and even here in the US there are many contractors who will try to cut corners. Even in a project as big and prominent as an NFL stadium there is massive pressure to save money and that can translates into substandard work.

Even so depending on how close and how shallow the quake is a modern building built to the current codes still might not survive a 7.8 earthquake. Earthquake damage isn’t just a matter of power of the quake but location. In this case where there has been a shift of 4 meters (more than 12 feet) a building sitting on or near the fault couldn’t survive. It could be a cube of solid concrete but if the earthquake is strong enough to shear through stone it will tear the foundation apart.

 

Watching in the morning news and they are still pulling people out alive. That is a real hopeful sign but after 4 days in cold chances of survival are low.