Earthquake hits Turkey
An earthquake struck Turkey at 4:32 a.m. (0232 GMT, 9 p.m. EST Sunday) turning building to a pile of rubble. The Kandilli seismology center recorded a 6.0 magnitude quake near the village of Basyurt located in the Elazig province. The province is 340 miles or 550 kilometers east of the Turkey’s capital Ankara. The U.S. Geological Survey however listed the quake as a 5.9 magnitude earthquake.
Hundreds of people had huddled around bonfires to keep them warm against the winter cold after the earthquake has their destroyed their homes or damage it enough to make it unsafe to be use as a shelter. The Kurdish Village of Okcular was almost razed leaving 15 residents dead. The poor mud-brick building infrastructure was blamed for the many deaths. More than a hundred aftershocks in the region were noted on Monday. These aftershocks were at least 5.5-magnitude. People had to use shovels and their bare hands to dig people buried in the rubble out. People from neighboring provinces of Tunceli, Bingol and Diyarbakir had to rush the streets in panic and had to stay outdoors.
Earthquakes are frequent in Turkey. In 1999, two earthquakes claimed the lives of 18,000 people. In 2003, 84 children were killed when their school dormitory collapsed in Bingol. The Total number of deaths reached 177. In 2007, buildings in Elazig were damaged by a 5.7 magnitude earthquake. Bernard Doft, a seismologist for the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in Utrecht, said that the Haiti and Chile earthquake was direct connection between the Turkey, Haiti and Chile Earthquake. According to the USGS, there are around 134 earthquakes ranging from 6.0 to 6.9-magnitude a year. That is about two earthquake of that magnitude a week
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