Earthquakes in Turkey and Syria a disaster
In the early hours of Monday, powerful Earthquakes hit Kahramanmaras in Turkey.
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Jenny Author at Phuket FM Radio.
More Earthquakes struck nine hours later.
When this edition of Science in Action first aired, 19,000 people were reported to have died, but that number was expected to rise. Updated Friday 10th 06:00 GMT More than 20,000 people are now known to have been killed in Monday’s earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, though the UN warns the disaster’s full extent is still unclear.
Back in 2016, Professor Asli Garagon and her colleagues accurately predicted that an earthquake of this size was coming.
Using GPS, they were monitoring the East Anatolian fault to calculate energy building between the plates.
With such accurate insight could Turkey have been better prepared?
Seismologist Ross Stein, and founder of Temblor, a Californian consultancy that specialises in assessing hazard risk, estimate the plates moved at 5,000 mph.
The movement of the plates may have built up pressure in other parts of the country.
And finally, Tiziana Rossetto, a civil engineer at University College London, knows better than most that earthquakes do not kill, buildings do.
She tells Roland how the combination of earthquakes and subsequent aftershocks appear to have even destroyed buildings that were purposely built to withstand them.
Presenter: Roland Pease Producer: Harrison Lewis Assistant producer: Sophie Ormiston
Image: Aftermath of the deadly earthquake in Gaziantep Credit: REUTERS/Dilara Senkaya
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