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A strong earthquake shook the Aegean Sea on Friday, causing damage in both Greece and Turkey, where buildings collapsed, killing at least four people and many others trapped under the rubble.
Turkey’s Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said at least 120 people were injured in the coastal province of Izmir.
People flooded the streets of the Turkish city of Izmir after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake, witnesses said. The remains of multi-story buildings in the city center could be seen with people coming out to escape. Smoke billowed into the sky in several areas.
Images on social media showed water running through the streets of Izmir due to an apparent storm surge.
Another tsunami recording of the earthquake in Izmir province in Turkey.
This is really dangerous pic.twitter.com/62zfddWSi8
– Ragıp Soylu (@ragipsoylu) October 30, 2020
Izmir Mayor Tunc Soyer told CNN Turk that 20 buildings collapsed. The city is the third largest in Turkey with around 4.5 million inhabitants. Turkey’s interior minister tweeted that six buildings in Izmir were destroyed.
Izmir Governor Yavuz Selim Kosger said at least 70 people had been rescued from the rubble. He said four buildings were destroyed and more than 10 collapsed, while others were also damaged.
Search and rescue efforts were continuing in at least 12 buildings.
Ilke Cide, a doctoral student who was in the Guzelbahce region of Izmir at the time of the earthquake, said he went inland after the waters rose after the earthquake.
“I’m very used to earthquakes … so I didn’t take it very seriously at first, but this time it was really scary,” he said, adding that the earthquake lasted at least 25 seconds.
The earthquake triggered a small-scale tsunami in Seferihisar district, Huseyin Alan, head of Turkey’s Chamber of Geological Engineers, told the state-run TRT news agency, warning people to stay away from buildings.
Images on social media showed debris, including refrigerators, chairs and tables, floating down the streets in the deluge. TRT Haber showed cars dragged through the water and stacked on top of each other.
Turkey’s Presidency of Emergency and Disaster Management (AFAD) said it was a 6.6 magnitude earthquake, while the US Geological Survey said it was 7.0. It struck around 11:50 GMT and was felt along the Aegean coast of Turkey and the northwestern region of Marmara.
People search for survivors in Turkey’s coastal Izmir province [Tuncay Dersinlioglu/Reuters]
The US Geological Survey said the depth was 10 kilometers (six miles) and the epicenter was 33.5 kilometers (20.8 miles) off the coast of Turkey.
Ali Yerlikaya, the governor of Istanbul, where the earthquake was also felt, said there were no reports of damage there.
Traversed by major faults, Turkey is among the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. More than 17,000 people died in August 1999 when a 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck Izmit, a city southeast of Istanbul. In 2011, an earthquake in the eastern city of Van killed more than 500 people.
The foreign ministers of Turkey and Greece pledged on Friday to assist each other in rescue and recovery efforts. The two countries have been embroiled in a dispute over energy rights in the eastern Mediterranean.
“Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece [Nikos] Dendias called our minister Mevlut Cavusoglu to wish him well. Both ministers stressed that they were ready to help each other in case of need, ”said the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
People search for survivors in a collapsed building in Izmir [Tuncay Dersinlioglu]Greece shook
The earthquake was also felt in the eastern islands of Greece and even in the Greek capital, Athens.
“We have had many earthquakes in the past, yet I have never felt one that lasted this long,” Anna Makris, school counseling coordinator in Athens, told Al Jazeera.
“There is a real sense of panic and now we are concerned about aftershocks,” Makris added.
Greek media said that residents of Samos and other islands fled their homes, while some rockslides were reported.
The director of the Samos hospital said four people were treated there for minor injuries. Both countries reported aftershocks.
Residents of Samos, an island with a population of about 45,000, were urged to stay away from coastal areas, Eftyhmios Lekkas, head of the Greek organization for anti-seismic planning, told Greece’s Skai TV.
“It was a very big earthquake, it’s difficult to have a bigger one,” Lekkas said.
Public television ERT reported that the earthquake caused a mini-tsunami in Samos and several buildings were damaged. It caused the walls of several houses to collapse and caused flooding in the port.
A resident of the Greek island of Ikaria, just off Samos, told Al Jazeera that he ran out of his house after “the earth began to move.”
“Some people screamed and began to cry while others tried to gather everyone in a safe place for fear that the buildings would collapse,” she said, asking not to be identified. “There are quite a few damaged buildings and landslides in different parts of the island.”
It is feared that many people could be trapped in demolished buildings [Tuncay Dersinlioglu/Reuters]
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