Saved on "antiseismic skeletons": experts named the reason for the terrible destruction and victims in Turkey

The footage from the Turkish cities affected by the earthquake is shocking: multi-storey buildings are folded like cards, burying hundreds and thousands of people under them. Meanwhile, tremors continue in Turkey itself, and in neighboring countries – in Armenia, Georgia, Abkhazia, Syria, Cyprus and even Israel... Tremors have been recorded in Bulgaria. Several airports have been shut down in Turkey, and power and internet outages have begun. President Erdogan said that after the first wave of earthquakes, it is known about two thousand dead and almost 5,400 injured. It is already clear that these numbers will grow several times.

Equal to 130 atomic bombs

No wonder Erdogan said: "This earthquake is the greatest disaster in the history of Turkey since the earthquake of 1939." Then more than 33 thousand people died. It is not yet possible to determine the number of victims in today's disaster.

Interestingly, the worst earthquake in the new history of Turkey was predicted in advance: Australian astronomer Frank Hugerbits predicted a catastrophe on the border of Turkey and Syria two days before the tremors, taking the geometry of the Earth as the basis for his calculations. The strongest earthquakes in Turkey are repeated every decade. In October 2011, for example, an earthquake on the border with Iran killed more than 600 people.

The channel "By the Way" asked for comment to the Director of the Institute of Earthquake Prediction Theory and Mathematical Geophysics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Peter Shebalin. Here 's how he explained the reasons for today's cataclysm:

"The reason for today's earthquakes is very simple. This is the movement of tectonic plates. The earthquake occurred on the East Anatolian fault, which separates the Anatolian Plate moving in a westerly direction along the southern and southeastern border". Earthquakes with a magnitude of about 6 will be repeated in Turkey for several days, the RAS warns.

Turkish geophysicist engineer Ovgyun Ahmet Erkan wrote on his account: "The earthquake in the Hatay-Osmaniye-Kahramanmarash-Gaziantep fault ridge had a magnitude of M7.4, had a power of about 130 atomic bombs, lasted 43 seconds, the more terrible it is - what happened on a cold winter day. The place where the earthquake occurred is the junction of four major faults - the Dead Sea Fault, the Eastern Anatolia Fault, the Arabian Shield and the Cyprus Bow..."

They build from shit and sticks

Meanwhile, comments from Russians living in Turkey appeared on social networks. It is known that many of our citizens live there, and recently their number has seriously increased due to the beginning of partial mobilization. They not only rented housing in Turkish cities, but also bought it. Moreover, apartment prices have risen at least twice in a few months.

It is already clear, bloggers write, that the same problems in construction have been revealed in Turkey that were, for example, during the earthquake in Armenia. At least some newly built concrete high-rise buildings began to "fold", because they were probably built with all the same violations:

- I live in Turkey near Mersin. There is a relatively safe seismic zone here. However, it did not shake weakly at night. We have no destruction. The quality of construction in Turkey sucks. There was not a single right angle in the previous apartment. Everything is diagonally.

- Here they build from shit and sticks. The technology is the same. Concrete pillars and ceilings. The gaps are laid with a hollow brick with thin walls.

Greek civil engineers commented on photos of destroyed cities on social networks:

"Please note that only houses built with an antiseismic skeleton remained intact - the way they are built in Greece. Such houses are visible from the side by the characteristic grid..."

Alas, in Turkey, unlike neighboring Greece and other civilized countries located in an earthquake-prone zone (Japan, for example), no one took care of such things.

Will Istanbul stand?

Moreover, many are already wondering whether Istanbul, the country's largest city, which is home to at least 15 million people, will survive. Everyone remembers the earthquake in August 1999, when tremors near Istanbul claimed the lives of almost 19 thousand people!

According to experts, Istanbul is the most vulnerable metropolis to earthquakes, and the consequences of the tremors will be terrible. At the same time, high-rise construction continues in Istanbul, and in addition, they are preparing to build a shipping channel "Bosphorus-2".

Experts warn that millions of tons of soil will need to be moved for this project, which will undoubtedly affect seismic activity in the Marmara Sea.