In the early morning hours of February 6th of 2023, a major earthquake struck a section
of south central Turkey.
At 4:17 am local time, this earthquake occurred, which registered in as a magnitude 7.8, marking
Turkey's largest earthquake since 1939 when a comparable magnitude quake occurred.
This 2023 quake was centered 1 kilometer east of the city of Atalar.
The damage it generated could best be described as far ranging and extreme, as thousands of
buildings completely collapsed, many of which pancaked.
The peak ground acceleration caused by the quake was likely even higher than the average
acceleration due to gravity on Earth at least for a time in some areas.
Large aftershocks soon followed, including a magnitude 6.7 quake which as an isolated
event would have been still quite devastating, occurring 11 minutes after the magnitude 7.8
quake.
Numerous aftershocks then followed which seemed to indicate that a several hundred kilometer
stretch of a major fault line had ruptued, perhaps as much as 250 kilometers in length.
If all of this wasn't bad enough, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck approximately 9 hours
later, causing several already damaged structures to collapse.
Strangely enough, these two magnitude 7 earthquakes were not the result of a phenomenon known
as a "doublet" earthquake, as doublet earthquakes occur on the same fault line.
Rather, the first major earthquake caused a completely separate fault line to rupture.
This is best shown via displaying all of the earthquakes which have occurred of magnitude
5.0 or higher since the sequence began.
You can see two separate trends.
One trends to the northeast while the other trends directly east.
Despite involving two different faults, both of these large earthquakes occurred due to
the same reason.
In this section of Asia, the Arabian Plate is colliding with the Anatolian Plate.
This has not created a subduction zone but rather a series of so-called strike-slip faults
which primarily move horizontally rather than vertically, producing large earthquakes about
once every 150 years in this section of the fault in a manner similar to the famous San
Andreas fault.
In this case it involved a large rupture of the East Anatolian Fault, which may have moved
as much as 8 meters or 26 feet in certain areas.
The second major earthquake involved the Çardak Fault, which was seemingly triggered by strain
release of the East Anatolian Fault.
Both faults subsequently had major aftershocks with the largest single aftershock after a
large earthquake being an average of 1.2 magnitudes less than the main larger quake.
In this case the East Anatolian Fault 7.8 was followed by a magnitude 6.7 aftershock.
And, the Çardak Fault which produced a magnitude 7.5 was followed by a magnitude 6.0 aftershock.
More aftershocks will continue for days, weeks, and possibly months but there is some good
news.
Over time, these will get less and less frequent.
Yet, as of the writing of this video 34 magnitude 4s, 16 magnitude 5s, and 2 magnitude 6 aftershocks
have occurred.
Due to the severity of this disaster, it is quite likely that the death toll will surpass
5,000 and that economic damage could cost upwards of 30 billion U.S. dollars.
Interestingly, this earthquake series may have even generated a several centimeter high
nondestructive tsunami on the west coast of Turkey, possibly due to some form of landslide
occurring.
As a final note, there is no reason to suspect that this earthquake series will trigger a
volcanic eruption at any of Turkey's volcanoes, despite the fact that an 1840 earthquake which
was in the magnitude 7 range triggered a deadly volcanic eruption and lahar at Mount Ararat.
At the present, none of Turkey's volcanoes are showing signs which could be considered
worrying, although Mount Erciyes's edifice has been the site of several small earthquakes
triggered by the quake sequence.
This is not a cause for concern as similar short term increases in quakes at volcanoes
often occur after larger distant earthquakes.
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