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Collapsed houses, desperate helpers, a tsunami: a strong earthquake caused destruction in the eastern Aegean. There are several dead in Turkey and on the Greek island of Samos.
It’s 30 seconds into the hours and probably days of recovery and cleanup work: a strong earthquake in the Aegean Sea caused great destruction in western Turkey and the Greek islands on Friday. Several people died; tsunamis occurred.
According to preliminary information from the Turkish civil protection authority on Friday night, at least 14 people died in western Turkey and around 419 were injured. Five houses collapsed and people were buried. In the video above or here you can see images of Izmir. According to information from the night, 70 could be rescued alive. Two young men died on the Greek island of Samos.
The Foreign Ministry currently has no evidence of Germans among the dead and wounded. The embassy in Athens, the Greek capital, and the consulate in Izmir, Turkey, are still in contact with the responsible authorities, the ministry said late Friday.
The first earthquake had a magnitude of 6.6, according to Turkey’s National Disaster Agency. The USGS, which is responsible for the earthquakes, even gave the earthquake a strength of 7. The center was located in the Aegean Sea off the Turkish province of Izmir, about 10 miles north of the Greek island of Samos, media reported. Turks and Greeks.
The wall of the house falls on the children, both dead
There were tsunamis both in Samos and on the western coast of Turkey. The earthquake institutes reported the first aftershocks further west of the main earthquake, several of them above magnitude 4.0. Greek television stations showed images of the flooded coastal walk, where the water washed away the cars. Power went out. The flooded streets can also be seen in pictures from the Turkish city of Seferihisar:
This video from the Izmir region shows how a tsunami pulls ships out of a port and into the sea:
The youths killed in Samos were reportedly headed home after school when the walls of a house collapsed due to the earthquake in a narrow alley. The media had previously reported that eight wounded were being treated at the hospital.
The German Geosciences Research Center (GFZ) in Potsdam also provided information on the “severe earthquake with tsunami” on Friday afternoon. According to GFZ calculations, the waves reached heights of more than 1.5 meters. They could possibly reach up to three meters high on the coast. Tilmann Frederik, a seismologist with the center, said the quake occurred in an area with high tectonic activity. The last earthquake of this magnitude occurred in the area in the 1950s.
Turkish TV channel TRT showed images of collapsed apartment buildings and clouds of dust over the city of Izmir in the afternoon. Panic was reported on the streets during the earthquake and telephone connections were cut. Turkish media reported that some hospitals in Izmir province had been damaged and needed to be evacuated. Mosques in the region offered shelter to people, the TRT reported. According to the Turkish state news agency Anadolu, several games of the Turkish soccer leagues have been canceled.
The authorities asked that the roads not be blocked and that the cellular network be relieved as much as possible. At night, dogs could be seen sniffing the debris looking for buried subjects, headlights illuminated the search point, heavy debris was moved with the help of cranes.
Samos residents are called to spend the night outdoors, in their cars if necessary. So far, Greek geologists are not sure if the biggest earthquake on Friday afternoon was the main one. They warn that strong aftershocks could eventually topple some houses that have already been damaged.
“Times when people have to stay together”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the population in a speech. Help the people affected by the earthquake by all means. Erdogan and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis offered each other assistance in a phone call, Anadolu reported. Mitsotakis expressed his condolences to Turkey on Twitter, writing: “Whatever our disagreements, these are times when people have to stand together.” Erdogan also thanked him on Twitter and replied: “That two neighbors show solidarity in difficult times is more important than much in life.” The governments of Athens and Ankara are currently at odds due to controversial gas exploration in Turkey and border disputes in the eastern Mediterranean.
The European Union and NATO also offered support to Turkey and Greece. “My thoughts go out to all those affected,” EU Council President Charles Michel wrote on Twitter on Friday. “The EU is ready to provide support.” The President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, also offered this.
According to various reports, the earthquake should have been felt in the Turkish metropolis of Istanbul and even the Greek capital, Athens.
In 1999, Turkey suffered one of the worst natural disasters in its history: more than 17,000 people were killed in an earthquake in the region around the industrial city of Izmit, northwest of Istanbul, east of Istanbul.
