On the night of February 5-6, 2023, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake shook the border region between Turkey and Syria, followed by another magnitude 7.7 earthquake nine hours later. These earthquakes ruptured on faults, including the East Anatolian Fault, located at the junction of the Arabian and Anatolian plates, and the Sinai Block. In the days and weeks that followed, numerous aftershocks, some of them of high magnitude, contributed to worsening the situation, causing a total of more than 50,000 deaths and more than 34 billion euros of damage (balance sheet as of February 28, 2023).

Over the days, collaborative work was carried out by Résif seismologists in many laboratories to advance in the understanding of the earthquakes, to determine the faults that ruptured and the depth and extent of the ruptures, the deformation processes at work, the evolution of aftershocks … The post-seismic cell of the Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers of the CNRS was activated to centralize the contributions that were made available to Turkish and Syrian colleagues.

From the day after the first earthquake, the Resif scientific community was widely solicited by journalists to comment on the event, then the aftershocks that followed. Dozens of interviews were given to newspapers and various media (including Turkish), which were also able to rely on the website ObservaTerre of Résif for a first approach of these phenomena.

Through this unprecedented disaster, it is also and once again the question of the predictability of such phenomena that is raised. The models of seismic hazard and risk in Europe, presented in April 2022 on this site, have taken all their meaning.

To know more

  • L’ObservaTerre – Link
  • New seismic hazard and risk assessments in Europe – LIEN
  • AFP Factuel – 15 février 2023 : “Non, il n’est pas possible de prédire les séismes” – LIEN

 

Déplacements horizontaux calculés par corrélation d’images optiques en utilisant le service GDM-OPT-ETQ de FormM@Ter implémenté sur Geoazards Exploitation Plateform © CNRS/EOST et ESA/SAT.

Déplacements horizontaux calculés par corrélation d’images optiques en utilisant le service GDM-OPT-ETQ de FormM@Ter implémenté sur Geoazards Exploitation Plateform © CNRS/EOST et ESA/SAT.