On Monday, February 6, 2023, we woke up to the news of two terrible earthquakes of great magnitude that occurred almost simultaneously in the Middle East and made themselves felt in several countries, notably in Türkiye and Syria. The death toll is increasing every day, which according to the World Health Organization could reach 50,000 victims after the rescue and recovery work is completed. The number of injured is also important and the economic damage is great.
There is no superlative adjective to describe such a catastrophe. The condition of the devastated areas is incredible, and it will take an enormous amount of time and resources to restore what has been lost. There will be areas that are likely to remain barren forever. But the most valuable thing they can never restore is the lives of so many people, whole families, it’s impossible.
As if that weren’t enough, the debacle of mankind breaking apart everywhere between wars, financial and political crises, plus nature doing its part and rebelling against us, for the last week the reports have been showing us entire regions completely devastated, pictures and testimonies difficult to process. Who can we blame for so much misfortune this time? Earthquakes do not choose where they act.
Destruction was capricious at Türkiye. Thousands of buildings have been rendered uninhabitable, and aerial photographs show cities that look like giant garbage dumps and huge cracks in the asphalt of the streets. The established state of emergency precedes the hardships to come, because once the rubble-clearing work is complete, there will still be plenty of time, effort and resources to rebuild a country that today appears largely collapsed.
Millions of people are harmed. It’s a disaster that’s hard to digest and crippling. It is up to the rulers to get rid of the inertia to act quickly. And fortunately, extreme situations tend to touch the sensibilities of the world, and help of all kinds is coming from various nations and organizations today, both to treat the injured and to clear the rubble.
However, the worst of some people who benefit from misfortune in such a context also emerges. In Türkiye, for example, President Recep Tayyip Endorgan denounced looting and other crimes committed by opportunistic citizens in the affected areas. That will always happen, human misery soon appears even in extreme situations.
The consequences of the accident are numerous. Adding to the loss of life and physical injury are viral illnesses caused by the unsanitary conditions caused by the collapse, and mental illnesses that are often more difficult to recover from. That is why psychological support is essential.
Scientists say that the devastated area is located on the East Anatolian Fault, where such a phenomenon has not occurred for more than two centuries, and therefore it has accumulated tensions all this time. An interesting fact that alarms are also what the experts refer to as the energy released by earthquakes. They confirm that due to its shallow depth, just 18 kilometers away, a large amount of seismic energy reached the surface, about three billion kilojoules, which, to understand it, is the equivalent of two thousand times more than that generated by the famous atomic bomb was released in 1945 over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. So it’s no wonder that the pictures are effective after the war.
Since then, hundreds of thousands of people have been improvising where to sleep in the open air, while seeing all their dreams shattered and not knowing what tomorrow will bring. Unrest unites them, each experiencing a radical and sudden change of routine. Everything fell apart in a few seconds and now the days go by for them with a busy hustle and bustle that doesn’t stop. Dust, trucks constantly driving in and out, thousands of uniformed officers and hard-working volunteers, rescue dogs, curious people, cheerfulness, nervousness: disaster.
It is not the first time such a catastrophe has happened. It won’t be the last either. It’s terrible, but little by little, progress will be seen. It’s time to resign and work with great optimism, thinking that nature is so unjust but also divine and there is nothing left but to go ahead and minimize future damage as much as possible by to build earthquake-proof buildings.