Earthquake: Fear for the 95 km fault in Istanbul – What Lekkas says
Efthymios Lekkas spoke about the estimates that a strong earthquake of up to 7.5 Richter is expected in Istanbul on Monday morning.
“The rift of North Anatolia that starts from the Caspian and ends in the Aegean with a length of 1,300 kilometers,
it has only one part that has not broken and has not caused a major earthquake and it is the one located in the underwater area south of Istanbul, Efthymios Lekkas told “Newsroom”.
The professor of Dynamic Tectonics of Applied Geology and Natural Disaster Management and president of OASP, clarifies that it is not a new fault but a large tectonic structure that is a branch of the North Anatolia fault. A second branch is the one from Nikomedia that passes through Bursa and diverges into two branches, 50 kilometers further south.
When asked if the direction is towards our country, Efthymios Lekkas answered: “Yes, both of these faults have one direction East, West. So both faults have a projection in the Aegean, not in the continental area of Greece.
The estimates are not only from Turkish seismologists, but correspond to estimates from groups from around the world.
Therefore, there is currently a given that we are expecting a big earthquake in Istanbul.
“President Erdogan himself is campaigning on the basis of the earthquake and says that his own candidate is better able to handle a potential earthquake disaster in Istanbul. So you understand that in Istanbul, because it is a city of 20 million people, there is a very large exposure of the population.”
Earthquake: “Hagia Sophia is very vulnerable”
Vulnerability even with static charge, i.e. no earthquake. I think the exposure due to population accumulation and density is too great. One third of the houses in Istanbul are old constructions before any anti-seismic regulations, One third are modern constructions with anti-seismic regulations.
But that doesn’t tell us much. Because we saw just last year that in Antioch and in the wider region what has happened even to new constructions. That’s where they had the biggest problem, those structures last year blew up during the night. Mr. Lekkas pointed out that constructions in the new city of Istanbul towards the airport also proved unsafe.
“It may or may not affect the Greek area”
“Yes, in 1999 we had the direct impact of the earthquake and there was an earthquake in the Greek area in Athens, 20 days after Turkey, but now, the matching is not complete and two-way because we have to see when an earthquake will occur, what characteristics dynamically, geometrically has, so we can see if it will affect the Greek area. It may not affect him, but we will see that based on the earthquake,” said the professor.
“There is no comparison between the constructions in the Greek area and the Turkish one. In Greece, public buildings are in very good condition and the primary institutional mandatory audit is progressing. In the next period of time we will have a partial picture and then at the end of the year we will have a complete picture”, said Efthymios Lekkas in conclusion.
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