With a combined death toll of over 50,000 in Türkiye and Syria, the earthquake that hit the Kahramanmaras region on February 6 can be considered one of the deadliest natural disasters in recent world history. It has crumpled entire towns, destroyed some of the oldest architecture in the world, and has decimated neighborhoods and shattered families. 

An earthquake is a sudden shaking or trembling of the Earth's surface caused by the movement of tectonic plates beneath the surface. The movement of the plates generates seismic waves that travel through the Earth and cause the ground to vibrate.

Earthquakes can range in magnitude from very small, barely perceptible tremors to extremely large and destructive events. The magnitude of an earthquake is measured on the Richter scale, which ranges from 0 to 10. Each increase in magnitude represents a tenfold increase in the strength of the quake.

Earthquakes can occur anywhere in the world, but they are most common along the edges of tectonic plates, where the plates are moving against each other. The most seismically active regions of the world are often referred to as the "Ring of Fire," which encompasses the Pacific Ocean and includes the coasts of North and South America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands.

In addition to tectonic plate movement, earthquakes can also be caused by human activities, such as drilling for oil or gas, mining, and the construction of large dams. These human-induced earthquakes are generally smaller and less powerful than natural earthquakes.                        

Earthquakes can have devastating effects, including loss of life, property damage, and economic disruption. In areas prone to earthquakes, buildings and infrastructure are designed and constructed to withstand seismic activity, and emergency response plans are put in place to help lessen the impact of earthquakes when they occur. Türkiye is known to sit on three tectonic plates.

Now, earthquakes, in and of themselves, aren’t necessarily dangerous, they won’t kill as many people if everyone was on the ground level, but it is the buildings and thier inevitable collapse that kills people. To combat potential earthquakes, buildings have to be constructed in such a way to make them “earthquake proof.” 

In other words, there are building codes for earthquake zones, called seismic codes, developed by the international Code Council (ICC), and they specify the minimum requirements a building must have to adequately safeguard the health, safety and welfare of building occupants. It is up to governments to adopt these codes, and Turkish authorities have emphasized that these codes are indeed in place. However, Turkïye had recently provided amnesty to many building contractors of illegal buildings that disregarded the codes when planning and building for the sake of monetary gain. Indeed, an earthquake-proof building is much more expensive to build and will adversely affect the bottom line for builders and investors. The problem also comes with older buildings, before codes were adopted, but even these can be retrofitted against earthquakes to follow regulation. 

Which brings us to our next point. The earthquake hit at 4:17 AM local time, a time when everyone is usually home and sleeping in their beds. Much of this area is a recently developed region dotted with housing projects that involve multi-story apartment complexes. So the majority of people lived in multi-story buildings whether it was in a ground level apartment on the tenth floor. There was no time to escape, the shaking happened, then the buildings fell, each floor collapsing over and beneath the other floors, pancake style. Other buildings fell over and on top of each other. While others are barely standing, waiting for another tremor to topple them over.  Entire families were lost, children died, babies lost their parents, parents who lost their children, and more. Those who made it out alive and injured, were left with the guilt of being survivors in a sea of death. Rescue workers with limited heavy machinery, used heat-sensing cameras and listened for the sounds of the people stuck under the rubble to pull out as many people as they could before it was too late. Indeed time is against them and anyone who managed to survive, pinned under tons of cement, metal, and furniture.   The first 72 hours are crucial to any rescue mission and it is when 90% of people who are stuck can actually be saved. As the days progress, the chances of rescuing anyone dwindles, and it just becomes a matter of recovering the bodies of victims. With that said, a number of miracles have happened where survivors have been found ten or more days after the earthquake. 

One of the  first miraculous rescues was that of a baby, born under the rubble and still attached to her mother, who had passed,  by umbilical cord. She was found ten hours after the earthquake and after being treated in the hospital was adopted by relatives and fittingly named Aya, which means “miracle”. 17-year-old Aleyna was recused 248 hours after the earthquake. She survived more than 10 days without food or water, doctors predict that it may be her inactivity that kept her alive since she conserved energy and her body kept functioning.  Brothers Muhammed ,17, and Baki, 21 Yeninar who were found 200 hours after their building collapsed. They survived on protein powder.  A 13-year old boy named Mustafa was pulled 228 hours after the quake attributed to a “triangle of life” when there is just enough space for a person to survive and wait for rescuers. These stories and countless other miracles continue to be shared on the news and on social media. These survivors are not out of the woods once they are pulled from the rubble, in fact they may lose their lives afterward due to shock and other bodily trauma.

Nevertheless, these stories give relief and hope and inspiration to all. These extraordinary survivors bring into question all the assumptions on human mortality, our ability to survive, and how much we can endure. 

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