Earthquake Turkey – Drones fly over the fault which opened on the earth’s surface and runs along the massacred Turkish territory since earthquake. In the video shot by the drone and published by Turkish television it is possible observe the movement of strike-slip faults that have ripped through the earth. They are impressive images in which one can guess the violence and tragedy that has befallen the populations of Turkey and Syria. The movement produced by the tectonic plates along the fault was captured by satellites a Nurdağı, Turkey, after the February 6-7 earthquakes. The relative displacement is about 3-4 meters
The rift extends for 300 kilometers along the East Anatolian fault. «The two plates, the Arabic one and the Anatolian one, have moved by three metres, but the energy released by the fault caused a very strong deformation along 300 kilometers», observes the seismologist Aybige Akinci, of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (Ingv).
From the point of origin of the earthquake, about 20 kilometers deep, the fracture has reached the surface and the deformation has occurred in correspondence with the segment of the fault that has broken. “Starting from the epicenter, the energy released reached a distance of 300 kilometers,” says Akinci. The East Anatolian fault, between 600 and 700 kilometers long, is one of the main ones in Turkey, together with the North Anatolian one, which is 1,500 kilometers long: «they are two important faults, well defined and along which important historical earthquakes have occurred» and in the points where the two earthquakes occurred in February, of magnitude 7.8 and 7.5, «there have not been such important earthquakes for over a thousand years», observed the expert.
«These are areas in which earthquakes were expected to occur, but if it is possible to understand where an earthquake could occur, it is impossible to predict when it will happen». On social networks we can already see the first images of the deformation that has reached the surface, observes the seismologist Alessandro Amato, from Ingv.
Now the surveys that the geologists will make along the fault will follow, but the fact that we begin to see the deformation «confirms the hypothesis that there has been a horizontal and transcurrent deformation» that from the hypocenter, i.e. from the point under the surface where the energy of the fault was released, it has propagated in horizontal direction. Further information on the deformation is expected from radar satellites, such as those in the Italian Space Agency’s (ASI) Cosmo SkyMed constellation, whose images are being processed.
Meanwhile the earth continues to shake between Turkey and Syria. “Tremors continue to be recorded both in the north-east direction and in the south-west direction, along the East Anatolian fault,” says seismologist Salvatore Mazza, from Ingv. Replications also continue along the secondary fault, just north of Eastern Anatolia, in the area of the Turkish city of Malatya. The aftershocks continue numerous and for both strong earthquakes of February 6, that of magnitude 7.8 and that of magnitude 7.5, important tremors are recorded, with magnitudes between 5.2 and 5.6. «It is more difficult – he adds – to have data on Syria because the seismic network no longer exists there due to the war. There are seismic stations in Turkey, but they are concentrated above all in the Bosphorus area», corresponding to the area closest to Istanbul, where one end of Turkey arrives, the North Anatolian one. Lighter and more distant earthquakes are also recorded towards the west, up to the Turkish coast.
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in Il Gazzettino
