On Wednesday, Istanbul was shaken up by a minor Earthquake. I am not sure where I was but my flat mate felt it, so did most of my friends. Maybe because it was my first earthquake I didn’t notice it? That doesn’t make any sense does it? Regardless, people were pretty shaken up by it because of reports of a big earthquake on its way.
In 1999 a massive earthquake rocked western Turkey. It hit in a city east of Turkey called Izmit (200,000 people, Turkey’s 35th largest city), causing massive damage. Some estimate put the death toll as high as 40,000 people and the damage to Turkey’s infrastructure was enormous. The quake registered 7.6. Since then Turkey redefined it’s building code to prevent the widespread damage in the next earthquake.
The US Geological survey has predicted that another massive earthquake will strike Istanbul in the next 30 years. Thus, while I was excited to have lived through my first earthquake (despite not noticing) some of my friends were quite scared. Until the news confirmed that a second earthquake would not be immediately coming, Istanbul was on edge.
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March 20th, 2008 - 10:35 pm
Did you just call ?zmit, east of Turkey! I hope it’s a typo-mistake :~)
March 22nd, 2008 - 4:44 pm
Hmmm I should say east of istanbul, or rather the eastern part of Istanbul.