Earthquake Rattles İzmit

An earthquake hit İzmit, Turkey on August 17, 1999, 3:01am(local time) when most people were sleeping. It had a magnitude of 7.4 and lasted about 37 seconds. It killed around 17,000 people, injured over 43,000 and left about 600,000 homeless. 

Among 56,000 buildings that were heavily affected by the earthquake, 120,000 poorly enginered houses were damaged beyond repair. Also, 600 apartments built by one contractor collapsed in the area. This was partly due to the attempt to take shortcuts to save money and time. Although there were  regulations to ensure that the buildings could withstand earthquakes, they were often ignored. As a result of the affected buildings, underground pipes and cables were broken, causing the electricity supply to be cut off, which took around 12 days to be restored. Emergency services could not reach the victims as the roads had been damaged by the earthquake.

As Izmit is situated on the plate boundary between the Anatolian and Eurasian plates, when the two tectonic plates moved past each other, friction built up and released  tremendous pressure which caused the earthquake.
Various countries offered help by sending out search teams,  medical aid and necessary supplies. Greece and Spain were some of the countries that sent out search teams. Also, UK granted £50,000 to the Turkish Red Crescent while International Red Cross and Red Crescent used £4.5million to help victims.

There were people saying that the government did a poor job protecting its people from the earthquake. When the government heard it, instead P.M.Bulent Ecevit lashed out at the media for insulting the government. The TV station Channel 6 had been shut down for almost a week , it was about criticsm against government.


I think the government should alert citizens on the importance of preparing against earthquakes. They should  check the foundation of buildings with contractors.
Bibliography
David H. Martin, http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/geology/turkey/index.php, extracted 27-02-2010
Unknown (Wikipedia), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Izmit,_Turkey_Earthquake, extracted 27-02-2010  Ross S. Stein, Aykut A. Barka and James H Dieterich, Geophysical Journal International, M. Nafi Toksoz and A.F. Shakal, http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/geology/turkey/, extracted 27-02-2010 
Geoblogs, http://www.slideshare.net/GeoBlogs/izmit-earthquake-facts extracted 27-02-2010

 Wong Xue Min (39)
 Sec 1 Diligence:)