{"id":2273,"date":"2023-11-01T11:24:25","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T07:54:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rcecwa.net\/en\/?p=2273"},"modified":"2023-11-01T11:49:19","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T08:19:19","slug":"turkey-earthquake-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rcecwa.net\/en\/turkey-earthquake-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey Earthquake 2023"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Introduction<\/strong><\/p>

On February 6, 2023, two massive earthquakes with magnitudes of 7.8 and 7.5 struck southern Turkiye and northwestern Syria. These earthquakes were felt in many neighboring countries and caused widespread casualties and destruction in the two countries of Turkiye and Syria. Following this events a team from International Institute of Earthquake Engineering & Seismology (IIEES) and RCECWA visited the earthquake affected areas in Turkiye and assessed different aspects of the earthquakes in order to outline the lessons from that events. A comprehensive report (in Persian) can be found at IIEES website (www.iiees.ac.ir<\/a><\/span>). Here, a brief summary is presented in English.<\/p>

Seismological Aspect<\/strong><\/p>

The first earthquake (Mw =7.8, Depth \u224818Km, Local Time = 04:17), centered about 35 Km northwest of Ghaziantep city was the strongest and most destructive earthquake in Turkiye since 27 December, 1939 Erzincan (North-East of Turkiye) earthquake, which had a similar magnitude, with the loss of around 33,000 lives. The resulting surface rupture can be followed for 200km (Fig. 3). This earthquake was followed by a shallow depth aftershock with 6.7 magnitude, 11 minutes later. 9 hours later (at 13:24 local time) the second earthquake (Mw =7.5, Depth \u224810Km) was occurred at a distance of 100Km north-east of the first one, near the Elbistan city on another faults. \u00a0<\/p>

The 6th February 2023 earthquakes originated on East Anatolian fault system, a large fault system with 700 Km long northeast-southwest left lateral transform fault (Fig. 1), which forms the boundary between the Anatolian and Arabian plates and accommodates the westward extrusion of Turkiye into the Aegean Sea, with a relative movement of about 10 mm per year (Aktug et al., 2016).<\/p>

Geotechnical impacts and Geo-hazards<\/strong><\/p>

Local geological and geotechnical conditions can lead to variation in earthquake ground motion characteristics (amplitude, frequency content, duration). This phenomenon that is known as the site effect seems to have an important role in destructive power of Turkiye earthquakes (Fig. 2). On the other hand, these earthquakes triggered many other geological hazards, such as the slopes instabilities (landslide), soil liquefaction and lateral spreading, which directly and indirectly increased the destructive effects of these earthquake (Fig. 3). The most important landslides triggered by these earthquakes are the Tepehan and Islahiye landslides (Fig 4.). Soil Liquefaction was the most important geohazard triggered by these earthquake and resulted in sever damages to Hatay airport, roads, urban facilities and buildings in many affected cities like, Iskenderun, Dorthiol, Samandagh and especially Golbashi (Fig. 5). Also, in this earthquake, some geotechnical structures such as earth dams, retaining walls and road embankments were seriously damaged (Fig. 6)<\/p>

Structural damages <\/strong><\/p>

The earthquakes of February 6, 2023 in Turkiye led to the destruction of a large number of buildings, even newly constructed. Investigation of the causes can be effective in preventing damages in future earthquakes. Some of the most important reasons from the structural engineering point are shown in figure 7 and can be listed as fallow:<\/p>