Terrifying videos from residents in Turkey and
Syria have given the world a glimpse into the death and destruction suffered
early this morning when a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the region.
Now, it's difficult to report the exact death toll because the numbers
keep increasing.
As of this moment, we know of at least 3800 people who have been
reported dead as a result of this earthquake, and
the death toll is expected to increase as rescue efforts continue.
The shock was felt as far away as Egypt, Israel, and Lebanon, and
this map shows you where the epicenter of the earthquake took place.
So it was, in fact, in Turkey and the quake was about 11 miles deep,
which is relatively shallow in the earth's crust, making it even more destructive.
Now, the initial earthquake centered near, and you're gonna help me out with this,
>> Gaziantep
>> Yes, in South Central Turkey,
was the deadliest to hit the country in more than 20 years and
was as strong as that of 1939, the most powerful ever recorded in Turkey.
Almost 3000 buildings collapsed across Turkey alone after the initial quake,
more buildings ,by the way, collapsed since then.
Now, at least 1650 people died and 5000 people were injured initially but
,as I mentioned, the death toll continues to increase.
We do not know where the number of dead and injured can go,
said the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Cenk, you jump in.
This is pretty terrifying considering you're from Turkey,
do you have any family in Turkey today?
>> Yeah, in fact my parents' hometown is right next to Gaziantep, so
we still have relatives there.
And so we checked in on them ,obviously, and
found out they're okay, but that's just our relatives.
A lot of people there are not at all okay.
One of the problems with the apartment buildings collapsing, and
now I believe over 5000 have collapsed, is that it's winter there as you can see,
it's snowing and a lot of people ran out in the middle of the night.
It happened at like 4.17 in the morning, the first one, and
only in their pajamas and obviously in a panic, running out of the earthquake and
some of the apartment buildings collapse and they were right to run out.
But then they wore almost no clothes, they can't go back inside the building because
they're worried about the aftershocks, right?
And so now you're worried about people dying from the elements.
And this is one of the rare moments where we see the goodness of humanity,
where it seems like almost the whole rest of the world is rushing in to help.
And that's wonderful to see anywhere from America, Europe, Israel,
the gulf states, United Arab Emirates, Russia is helping Syria, their ally etc.
So, that's very heartening to see.
But guys, the devastation here is tremendous for two reasons.
One, the earthquakes were massive.
A 7.8 is gigantic.
>> It is.
Yeah. >> And then the biggest Aftershock was
a 7.5.
That is enormous for an aftershock, and that one was only, I think,
six miles down.
So that's even closer to the surface, and so it brought unbelievable devastation.
And so people don't know where to stay, and
then pulling the people out of the rubble, as always, that's the most heartbreaking.
It is very, very hard to watch.
>> Yeah. Every once in a while,
they'll get a live child out of the rubble.
>> My God.
And there was this family of four they found after 17 hours,
buried inside the rubble and almost freezing to death including with kids.
But they got them out, they got them out.
So you see a couple of those stories, and that's great to see but ,unfortunately,
a lot of folks of course didn't make it out, thousands of thousands.
And, Turkey lies on three fault lines.
So, that's why you hear these tremendous earthquakes coming out of Turkey
every once in a while, the one in 99 killed 18,000 people.
>> What?
>> Yeah.
Because it hit a much larger population center.
>> My God. >> And so there's one other element here,
unfortunately, the regulations in the code in this area is not anywhere
near what we're used to, and some of our buildings collapse.
You remember the one in Miami that fell etc.
Well, when you get hit with an earthquake and you didn't follow code,
the buildings collapse a lot easier.
There's a reason why we do regulation.
>> Yeah, let me jump in actually because whenever there's a big earthquake in
another country or even within our own country, since I've lived through
a pretty bad earthquake, I compare it to what I personally experienced, right?
So in 1994, Northridge California was hit with a magnitude 6.7 earthquake,
and I remember the house was shaking so aggressively that as me and my family,
I was eight years old at the time, as we were trying to run out of
the house to safety, because we were afraid the house was gonna fall on us,
we kept falling over, there was no running out, right?
So at one point me and my mom were just ,kind of,
standing underneath the threshold of one of the doors,
praying because we couldn't get out, we were terrified.
This was a 7.8, so when I think about what we experienced compared to
the magnitude of this earthquake in Turkey, I can't imagine what that's like.
That lead to more building code regulations in Southern California.
So there are these apartment buildings known as dingbat buildings,
where they have carports where people can park their cars, those are supposed to be
retrofitted now to be a little more sturdy in case there's another earthquake, and
there will be another earthquake at some point in the future.
But those building regulations are so incredibly important,
especially if we're dealing with buildings on top of a fault line.
>> Yeah.
So we're gonna show you the graphic where you can contribute to relief efforts,
and obviously, we'll put the link in the description box below,
because it's a very long description.
You can write it down if you're watching the show live,
if you're watching this later, the link will be down below.
We're using Hassan's link there, as you can tell,
Hasan Piker was a former host here ,he is my nephew.
He's been doing a great job of fundraising, but
it's eventually going back to a trusted organization that's
bringing the desperately needed money and relief to folks.
Look, the videos I've seen, there're over 5000 buildings collapsed.
That's devastation I haven't seen in a long, long time.
And so God knows they need it, and they need it in the beginning,
most of all, to get the survivors out.
And so, logistically that's super hard, we wish them the best,
obviously, and as far as my relatives are concerned,
they did find an old school, tiny little farmhouse.
And so they're lucky, they at least have a roof over their head and
all of the different cousins from back in the day that we're connected to
are now there and they're relatively safe.
There's so many other people that are in dire need.
So, our heart goes out too