new active fault zone

EARTH 24 October 2011

By Wendy Zukerman

Meeting of faults

(Image: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features)

An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 struck Turkey yesterday, killing more than 200 people and
injuring thousands.

Turkey is one of the most quake-prone countries in the world. Most of it lies on the
Anatolian plate, a small wedge-shaped tectonic plate that is being squeezed westwards as
the Arabian plate to the east slams into the Eurasian plate.

Many of Turkey’s most severe quakes occur on one of the two faults that flank the
Anatolian plate – the north and the east Anatolian faults. Between 1939 and 1999 Turkey’s
major earthquakes were marching westward along the north Anatolian fault, prompting
fears that Istanbul – which lies near the fault – would eventually shake. In 1999 a
magnitude-7.6 quake struck near Izmit, just 70 kilometres from Istanbul, killing around
17,000 people.

Since 2003, however, activity has shifted to the east Anatolian fault. In that year more than
100 people died after a quake near the city of Bingöl. The east fault slipped again last year,
and the resulting 6.1-magnitude quake killed 51.

According to the US Geological Survey, yesterday’s earthquake hit at 1.41 pm local time
(1041 GMT) at a depth of 20 kilometres. Its epicentre was 16 kilometres north-east of Van
in eastern Turkey, which places it near the junction of the two Anatolian faults. Here,
tectonic activity is dominated by the Bitlis suture zone – a broad zone of compression
caused by the collision of the Arabian and Eurasian plates.
“Since yesterday’s quake is in the junction it’s hard to know which fault was responsible,”
says Kevin McCue, director of the Australian Seismological Centre in Canberra. However,
the USGS is now reporting that the style of tectonic activity is consistent with
compressional activity within the Bitlis suture zone.

Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21083-turkey-earthquake-reveals-a-new-

active-fault-zone/#ixzz61drk6KWq

Turkey is located in a region that is shaken by severe earthquakes, which occurred almost every year.
The central Anatolian Fault Line is one of the most active fault zones in the world, lying along the
northern part of the country, from southeast to the northwest. The reason that these severe
earthquakes causes a lot of damage and death is not only the nature of the fault zone, but also that
there are many cities and highways settled on it, an unfortunate consequence of the ignorance of the
poor regional planning of the country. There is no way that cities can't be affected from severe shakings
each year. The most serious damage, for example occurred in August 1999,causing approximately
20,000 deaths and millions of dollars in physical damage in three cities. In recent years, some early
warning systems have been developed warn the citizens of any upcoming shakings. Although these may
only provide warnings as short as 10 seconds before the shakings, if there is a well-planned rescue
organization, it may help to at least decrease, the death rates from these earthquakes.