According to the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck southern Turkey early Monday morning is considered the strongest earthquake the country has experienced in years. over 100 years.
The USGS says a magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck eastern Turkey in 1939 killed more than 30,000 people.
Karl Lang, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, told CNN that the area hit by Monday’s quake is highly susceptible to seismic activity.
“It’s a seismic region. It’s a very large fault zone, but this is a bigger earthquake than any they’ve experienced in recent memory,” Lang said.
“The intensity of the shaking felt at the surface is both a function of the amount of energy released, the size of the earthquake, and the distance that the energy is released below the surface. So if it were being very close to the surface, if it’s a shallow earthquake, it can be very dangerous.”
Earthquakes of this magnitude are rare, with fewer than five on average occurring each year anywhere in the world.
“What’s really unusual here is that a very large earthquake is also near the surface,” Lang said.
Some contexts: Turkey is no stranger to strong earthquakes; seven earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have hit this country in the past 25 years — but Monday’s was the most powerful. It is also the strongest earthquake to strike anywhere in the world since a magnitude 8.1 earthquake that struck a remote region near the South Sandwich Islands in the south Atlantic in 2021. , causing no damage.
