At least six people have died and another 294 have been injured in two new earthquakes of magnitude 6.4 and 5.8 that have shaken this Monday the Turkish province of Hatay, between Turkey and Syria, demolishing some buildings and causing panic among the survivors of the strong earthquakes two weeks ago, which left at least 41,000 dead and more than 100,000 injured.
The main tremor occurred at 5:04 p.m. (GMT time, 8:04 p.m. local time), in the Defne district, south of the city of Antioquia, in the province of Hatayone of the eleven already devastated in the two major earthquakes, according to data from the Kandilli observatory in Istanbul, and has also been felt in neighboring countries such as Egypt or Lebanon.
The Minister of Health, Fahrettin Koca, has indicated that 18 of the 294 injured reported as a result of these latest earthquakes are in critical condition.
Also the stability of several reservoirs is concerned of water in the region, which had already suffered structural damage in the tremors of the past day 6, although the Government indicated that there is, for the moment, no risk of collapse.
Search for trapped people
The new tremors have caused scenes of panic and the local authorities have requested the urgent shipment of tentssince the population does not want to return to their homes for fear of new building collapses.
The Minister of the Interior, Suleyman Soylu, already warned this Monday of the possibility of more people trapped in the ruins of the buildings that have collapsed due to the two new earthquakes. At the moment, in three buildings collapsed as a result of these earthquakes, according to Soylu, searches for trapped people are being carried out.
Refik Eryilmaz, the mayor of Samandag, has told the NTV station that several buildings had collapsed and it is not known if there were people inside. He has also said that it is possible that some residents had taken refuge from the intense cold in the remains of buildings damaged in the earthquakes two weeks ago, and desperately demanded the sending of tents to house the population.
Defne City Council has indicated that there has been a power outage and the entire area is in darkness. “There are collapsed buildings. People are horrified. There were no people in the collapsed buildings. I see collapsed buildings, but I think there were no people inside,” the president of the Hatay College of Architects, Mustafa Ozçelik, told the station ‘HalkTV’.
Ahmet Ovgun Ercan, a prestigious geophysicist from Istanbul Technical University, has assured the HalkTV station that this earthquake, to which he has calculated a duration of 17 seconds, is a normal phenomenon and has anticipated that some already damaged buildings will have collapsed.
“��A 6.4-magnitude earthquake shakes the Hatay region (Turkey) again
▶LIVE image on #Canal24horas Antioquia, capital of the affected province: https://t.co/0Ix6dDsBAd pic.twitter.com/oi0qd8Fgmx“
– RTVE News (@rtvenoticias) February 20, 2023
The Turkish authorities have warned the population to stay away from the coast in Hatay province, since the water level could rise by half a meter after the new earthquake.
This new tremor has been registered in the town of Samandağ, about 12 kilometers from the Mediterranean coast, for which AFAD, the Turkish emergency agency, has asked to get away from the water.
Rescue efforts have ended in almost all provinces
Meanwhile, the search for survivors of the earthquakes of February 6 is about to end, with a provisional record of 41,156 deaths, according to what the Turkish authorities have indicated on Monday.
The rescue work has been completed in ten of the eleven provinces affected by the disaster and there are only fifteen landslides in Hatay province, according to the president of the AFAD national emergency service, Yunus Seker.
In all, the search teamsmade up of nearly 20,000 experts, have tracked 20,870 collapsed buildings, it added.
AFAD has already erected some 300,000 tents in the region to shelter survivors, and plans to set up at least 100,000 prefabricated houses in the next two months.
“#Earthquake #earthquake REVISED M 6.3 – TURKEY-SYRIA BORDER REGION – 2023-02-20 17:04:30 pic.twitter.com/Fqb8j5KZiF“
—SSGEOS (@ssgeos) February 20, 2023
The earthquakes have destroyed thousands of homes, forcing 1.3 million people shelter in tentseither in prefabricated houses or in temporary care institutions in the affected region, Seker said.
Besides, almost a million have moved to other provinces of the country, 392,000 through the evacuation points established by the Government and 480,000 by their own means.
The area that was affected by the magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes is about 100,000 square kilometers and some 13 million people lived there. According to the latest data, some 118,000 buildings in the region, corresponding to some 400,000 homes, have either collapsed or become useless and must be demolished.
