More than 1,500 people died and several hundred were injured after a major earthquake of magnitude 7.8 hit south-central Turkey and Northwest Syria on Monday early morning.
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdoğan said that authorities are yet to determine how high the death toll might rise as search and rescue operations are still going on. AP news reported hundreds are still believed to be trapped under debris.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) said while the quake was centred about 33 km from Gaziantep, around 18 km deep, its effect was felt across West Asia, Northern Africa and South Eastern Europe with residents of Lebanon, Cyprus, Greece, Israel and Egypt also reporting tremors.
India is among the 45 countries, which have so far offered assistance to Turkey. It’s sending search and rescue teams of the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF) and medical teams along with relief material to the West Asian nation.
What is an earthquake?
An earthquake is an intense shaking of the ground caused by movement under the earth’s surface. It happens when two blocks of the earth suddenly slip past one another, according to USGS. This releases stored-up ‘elastic strain’ energy in the form of seismic waves, which spreads through the earth and causes the shaking of the ground.
What exactly causes earthquakes?
As we know, the earth’s outermost surface, crust, is fragmented into tectonic plates. The edges of the plates are called the plate boundaries, which are made up of faults. The tectonic plates constantly move at a slow pace, sliding past one another and bumping into each other. As the edges of the plates are quite rough, they get stuck with one another while the rest of the plate keeps moving. Earthquake occurs when the plate has moved far enough and the edges unstick on one of the faults.
USGS says that “the location below the earth’s surface where the earthquake starts is called the hypocenter, and the location directly above it on the surface of the earth is called the epicentre.”
Can earthquakes be predicted?
No. An accurate prediction of an earthquake requires some sort of a precursory signal from within the earth that indicates a big quake is on the way. Moreover, the signal must occur only before large earthquakes so that it doesn’t indicate every small movement within the earth’s surface. Currently, there is no equipment to find such precursors, even if they exist.