3 Istanbul districts face imminent earthquake danger
A fault line crossing the coast of three districts on Istanbul’s European side has been “going through abnormalities,” according to experts who warn that the line might likely “break” and cause tremors.
Professor Haluk Özener, director of Boğaziçi University’s Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, the leading authority on earthquake data and the observatory’s Regional Earthquake-Tsunami Tracking Center Director Doğan Kalafat, say that the fault line stood out among others according to data they collected. Kalafat said that the “middle segment” of a vast region crisscrossed with fault lines was a possible epicenter of future earthquakes. “It is a line stretching from the coast of Silivri to Büyükçekmece. The current data shows new anomalies on the line,” Kalafat told the Milliyet newspaper. “This is an area where no earthquake took place for about 250 years. The risk is higher,” he warned.
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Istanbul, Turkey’s most populated city, has always been under constant risk from a “big one,” scientists say. According to Haluk Özener, an earthquake with a magnitude of at least 7.0 on the Richter scale will hit Istanbul on an unknown future date. He calls it the “Marmara earthquake” after the region where the city is located give that it is expected to affect the nearby cities as well. “Only thing we can do now is to lessen the damage,” he says.
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The country is among the world's most seismically active zones as it is situated on several active fault lines, with the most potentially devastating being the Northern Anatolia Fault (NAF), the meeting point of the Anatolian and Eurasian tectonic plates.
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