News about the Earthquake in Turkey-Tuesday August 17
 

Tuesday August 17 2:28 AM ET
IZMIT, Turkey (Reuters) - A powerful earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale rocked western Turkey Tuesday, killing more than 100 people and injuring hundreds others.
Frequent reports of collapsed buildings in heavily populated areas suggested that the death toll could rise.
The industrial town of Izmit, the epicenter of the quake, seemed to be worst hit. Anatolian news agency said many people had also died in the cities of Bursa, Istanbul and Eskisehir.
Witnesses said rescue teams were struggling to reach residents buried under dozens of collapsed .Earthquakes of more than six on the Richter scale can cause widespread damage in built up areas.The quake hit at 0020 GMT when most residents were asleep. ''It was very powerful. We were shaken out of our beds. Everyone is now out in the streets,'' said resident Mehmet Cankaya.
Istanbul was plunged into darkness as the quake cut power to the city of some 10 million people. Thousands of frightened residents crowded into the main streets.

 Tuesday August 17 9:02 AM ET
Death Toll In Turkish Earthquake Over 800-State TV

ANKARA (Reuters) - The death toll in an earthquake which hit Turkey Tuesday stood at more than 800 by late afternoon, state-run TRT television said, citing information from the crisis center in the capital.
The quake, measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale, struck at 3:02 a.m. local time, centered on the northwestern industrial city of Izmit, some 55 miles east of Turkey's biggest city, Istanbul.

Wednesday August 18 1:56 AM ET
Turks Fight Against Time, Fire After Quake
IZMIT, Turkey (Reuters) - Turks dug through rubble with their bare hands Wednesday in a desperate search for survivors while the world rallied to help the country ravaged by an earthquake that killed over 2,000 people.
The official death toll had risen to 2,160 in the 28 hours since the quake rocked Turkey's populous northwest Tuesday, burying hundreds of residents in their sleep and setting the country's biggest oil refinery aflame.
Rescue teams dug at the ruins of a building at a naval base in Golcuk in search of some 200 buried sailors. They recovered 20 bodies and as many wounded. A guard said he and his comrades struggled to dig them out bare-handed.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 1999 | Site Updated 4:40 AM
August 19, 1999
Over 4,000 Killed in Turkey Quake

By Dr. Asali Zaki -Israel 19/08/1999

Centr Term Earthquake found at ELS (-19179 ) in the Hebrew text  Leviticus Chap.13:12 to
Deut.Chap.13:18                                          
Legend:  key words set encoded and related  in proximity of this event:
 

EarthquakeELS -19179 to Hit In Turkey Izmit (city) 17 /August=5/Elul 1999 /(5759)= Morning Quake,Tremble the Earth Fire to Destroy, Destruction

Thousand (plor.) Number families  The Men,Persons to Die ,Death Absentee,missing Drama

Filed at 7:54 p.m. EDT
 

By The Associated Press
U.S. and Turkish scientists predicted two years ago that within the following three decades, a major earthquake was likely to strike Turkey.
When the North Anatolian fault Tuesday unleashed a quake so strong it killed more than 2,000 people and injured thousands more, the epicenter was in the area of the port city of Izmit. The team of scientists had estimated a 12 percent probability of a ``large event'' near that city.
Earthquake researchers say the 30-year timeframe of the study, published in 1997 in the England-based Geophysical Journal International, is too broad to claim a bull's eye prediction, or to have prevented the death and destruction associated with Tuesday's 7.8-magnitude quake.
But the authors of the study said the similarities between the prediction and Tuesday's quake demonstrated that the inexact science of earthquake prediction is improving.
``This method can tell us something useful about how earthquakes occur,'' said James Dieterich of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. ``But I would not claim it's far enough along to base public policy on it.''
Another earthquake expert, Lucy Jones, said the prediction was impressive.
``They predicted that two sections of the fault would have stresses, and one of those sections had the earthquake today,'' said Jones, scientist-in-charge of the U.S. Geological Survey office in Pasadena, Calif.
 The study predicting movements along the North Anatolian fault was conducted by Dieterich and Ross Stein of the geological survey, as well as Aykut Barka of Istanbul Technical University.
Searching seismic records, the scientists determined that the 500-mile long fault, which runs east-west across Turkey, unleashed 10 earthquakes of magnitude 6.7 or greater between 1939 and 1992.
In each case, they reported, the stress released by each tremor only served to transfer more stress and pressure to other weak locations along the fault. The process has helped to trigger the next quake, the scientists said.
``Stress is calculated to be high today at several isolated sites along the fault,'' Dieterich said. ``Increased stress means there is an increased probability that another earthquake will occur. Our calculations narrow it down as to where it might occur.''
Tuesday's event was the deadliest recorded earthquake to hit western Turkey. The subsequent shaking destroyed buildings, collapsed highways and cut off power and water to millions living along the heavily populated Bosporus Strait.
Scientists were analyzing information from a worldwide network of seismic monitoring stations Tuesday. Teams of investigators from U.S. agencies and universities were preparing to fly to Turkey.
 Geophysicists at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo., described the quake as one of the most powerful recorded in the 20th century, rivaling the 7.9-magnitude tremor than devastated San Francisco in 1906.
The earthquake in Turkey was initially reported as a magnitude 7.8 quake, but scientists said its intensity might be downgraded as low as 7.4 as additional measurements were taken into account.
``You don't expect one of this magnitude very often,'' said Bill Smith, a geophysicist at the Golden center. ``It set off alarms at quite a few of our monitoring stations around the country.'
It was a shallow tremor -- six miles deep along the North Anatolian fault. Much like the more famous San Andreas fault in California, the North Anatolian runs along the line where two plates in the Earth's crust grind against each other.

Beneath Turkey, the Eurasian plate sits to the north and moves westward. The African plate is located to the south and moves eastward.

Seismic monitors recorded as many as 250 aftershocks in western Turkey in the hours after the quake.

The largest aftershock measured 5.3 in magnitude. It occurred 3 hours and 15 minutes after the primary tremor, which struck at 3 a.m. local time (8 p.m. EDT Monday), catching most people asleep.

In 1992, 485 people were killed by a 6.5 magnitude quake in Ercinzan, located on the eastern end of the North Anatolian fault. The U.S. Geological Survey study predicts a 15 percent probability for another major quake in that same area in the next 30 years.
 

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