The double earthquake of February 6 in Kahramanmaras, which officially caused more than 46,000 victims on Turkish soil, revived awareness of the seismic risk among the 16 million inhabitants of the megalopolis of Istanbul. Some families are now considering moving to another city, as the ancient Byzantine capital sits on an active seismic fault.
With our correspondent in Istanbul, Celine Pierre-Magnani
Esra no longer sleeps at night. The 43-year-old cleaning lady lives in the district of Erenköy, a residential area on the Asian side of Istanbul. She is haunted by the images of the Kahramanmanras earthquakeof February 6, and says she is terrified at the idea of this happening in her city:
” We made the decision to leave, yes, but officially, we are still waiting for the control of the specialists and the teams of the town hall to know the state of our building. If the report is bad, then we’ll leave. Maybe the neighboring building is not compliant, but our building is solid. Once we get the report, we’ll make a final decision. But I heard that not all buildings that have more than five stories are compliant. I’d rather not think about it… we’d get crushed. »
Istanbul is located on an active seismic fault and many buildings are not in compliance with seismic standards. Faced with this observation, Esra and thousands of other inhabitants are now choosing exile. Leaving the city of Istanbul with the hope of rebuilding a life far from risk.
Yet, according to experts, the tragedy could have been avoided, because for decades, many seismologists have been sounding the alarm. Like the renowned seismologist Naci Görür, who shares his work on the question and regrets not having been heard.
We started researching the Sea of Marmara in 1997 with Dan McKenzie, for the University of Cambridge, but it didn’t change anything. What I mean is that you can say whatever you want, neither the authorities nor the people listen to you: nobody cares. What can I do ? And then the earthquake happened. But it was predictable to some extent. Until Ekrem İmamoğlu, we were never taken seriously, in any way, at any time. But this is changing a bit lately with the Maraş and Gaziantep earthquake: we received an official request for the first time. First the Presidency team and then the Ministry added us to a number of working groups.
Renowned Turkish seismologist Naci Görür complains of not being heard by the authorities about an earthquake of this magnitude