More than a thousand people in Istanbul, Turkey, sought refuge in mosques, schools, and other temporary shelters on Thursday, following a powerful earthquake that shook the city the day before. Authorities reported that around 1.5 million buildings are now at risk.
The magnitude 6.2 tremor on Wednesday sent citizens dashing from shaking homes, reviving memories of a historic quake that devastated the country’s southeast two years ago – and raising anxieties about the city’s lack of preparedness.
It hit a city that has recently seen mass protests over the arrest of its mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu. Scheduled demonstrations still occur twice weekly, with more spontaneous protests cropping up regularly.
Frustrated By Govt Inaction
There were no deaths from Wednesday’s tremor, the biggest in years in Istanbul, which sits just north of a fault line crossing the Marmara Sea. Some 5 million of the city’s 16 million residents live in risky homes, data showed in 2023.
While the government said preparing the city for a bigger earthquake was urgent, the opposition party – which runs the municipality and has been frustrated by what it calls inaction by the central government – said its urban transformation plan must finally be adopted.
Imamoglu and some of the city’s other disaster-response officials are in prison pending trial on charges brought last month that were broadly criticised as politicised and anti-democratic.
From his cell outside the city, Imamoglu – who is President Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival and leads him in some polls – said on social media it was his “greatest sadness” not to be able to serve residents at this time.
‘No Time To Lose’
Dozens of people were hurt leaping from homes on Wednesday, which was the nationwide Children’s Day holiday in Turkey, while concrete chunks from some buildings crashed to the ground. Seven buildings had minor damage as a result, authorities said.
“The immediate shelter needs of 101,000 citizens have been effectively and comprehensively met,” Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said of people who overnighted in mosques, schools and dormitories. Others slept in tents or vehicles.
Murat Kurum, the urbanization minister, said about a third of the 1.5 million buildings deemed at risk “require urgent transformation – and we have no time to lose.”
Tremor Revives Dreaded Memories
The municipal government sought to work with Erdogan’s government on infrastructure transformation to prepare for earthquakes, he said. “With a sense of national and international mobilization, our Istanbul Earthquake Council proposal must be put into action.”
February 2023’s 7.8-magnitude earthquake was the deadliest and most destructive in Turkey’s modern history, killing more than 55,000 people in the south and in neighbouring Syria, and leaving hundreds of thousands still displaced.
The latest tremor also revived memories of a 1999 earthquake that killed 17,000 near Istanbul, Europe’s largest city which also spans across the Bosphorus Strait to Asia.
(With inputs from Reuters)
