Al-Marsad Newspaper: Writer Badr bin Saud commented on the disaster of the earthquake that occurred in Turkey and Syria last week, noting that there are 4 Arab countries at risk of catastrophic earthquakes.
earthquake Turkey
He said during an article published in the newspaper “Okaz” entitled: “Pay attention to the details”: “On Monday, the sixth of February, it was nightmarish in its details, as it carried news about the earthquake in Turkey and Syria, which came with a magnitude of seven degrees and nine-tenths on the Richter scale, and every Condolences to the families of the victims in this irreparable loss, and earthquakes are not strange to Turkey, because it is within an area of seismic activity, and similar earthquakes occurred in it with the same strength, between 1939 and 1944 and 1957 and 1999, and it has standards for earthquake-resistant buildings for 23 years, but it appears The collapsed buildings were built before that.
Countries Arabic exposed risk earthquakes
He continued: The Arab countries have only four countries that are at risk of catastrophic earthquakes, and they include: Yemen, the Sultanate of Oman, Egypt and Algeria. North Yemen was exposed in the thirties of the twentieth century to an earthquake measuring six degrees, and the Sultanate of Oman was targeted by a tsunami or a marine earthquake in 1954, and in 1992 an earthquake occurred. In the governorates of Cairo and Giza in Egypt, with a strength of five degrees and six tenths. Algeria is considered the Arab country most exposed to earthquakes, and its share during the period between 1945 and 2003 reached three strong earthquakes, the most severe of which was recorded by seven degrees and three tenths, and the largest earthquake in the world occurred in Chile in 1960 and had a magnitude of nine degrees.
earthquakes manufactured
And he added: To complement the foregoing, there are manufactured earthquakes, which are estimated to be about 150 years old, according to the (National Geographic) website, and are driven by human activities and not by tectonic plates, such as the nuclear explosions carried out by North Korea in 2017, which led to an earthquake measuring six and three-tenths of a magnitude, and it continued. Aftershocks for eight months, and the earthquake that struck Yuhang in South Korea, with a magnitude of five and a half degrees, as a result of drilling operations in a project to generate electricity from geothermal energy.
fuel fossil
And he continued: In addition to the extraction of fossil fuels, and the possibility of it disturbing the balance between the compressive force and the earth’s crust, as happened in the Saudi Ghawar field 13 years ago, when the daily withdrawal rate increased from two hundred thousand barrels to one million and one hundred barrels, which caused an earthquake of four and a half degrees, and there is a case Close to it, it occurred in the Bish Dam in Jizan, Saudi Arabia, and caused seismic activity in its area of five degrees.
code Building
He added: The earthquake in Turkey and Syria provides a useful lesson, and the Kingdom approved a long time ago a code for seismic construction in its lands, in which it divides its entire regions into 25 zones, and each zone or city has a different seismic building code, which enables it to withstand coastal earthquakes, regardless of their strength, specifically in the west. And the east of the Kingdom, and the code is supposed to be linked to the real estate loan to oblige people to it, because its cost is less than half a percent of the actual building value, or the equivalent of $1,300 in every $267,000, with the need to benefit from the Japanese experience by placing rubber blocks under the foundations and in the internal structures of buildings. , and isolates it from the movement of the earth at the time of the earthquake.