Istanbul an inevitable earthquake disaster waiting to happen

The Little Apocalypse was the last earthquake to hit Istanbul in 1509, 503 years ago.
For a few years now seismologist have predicted that an earthquake could flatten Istanbul the capital city of turkey with a total population of around 14,000,000 (18% of turkeys total population) the fault that Istanbul is located near is the North Anatolian fault, in the past decade earthquakes have moved there way along the fault like unzipping a coat and its next predicted place to strike will most likely effect Istanbul.

photo credit to www.earthmagazine.org

Seismologist have predicted that the earthquake will be very large they also say that there is a 65% probability that Istanbul will be hit by a 7.6 earthquake by 2030 however this has to be taken with a pinch of salt as there have been countless times when scientist have been wrong about earthquakes and there is really no way they can predict what the fault will do.

The impacts an earthquake will have on Istanbul?

Istanbul is not geographically in a worse place than LA or Tokyo, however, its the rate the city is expanding and the style of houses and rack of regulation thats scary about 65% of buildings in Istanbul don't meet the rules and the city is growing too fast for anyone to be able to keep up this will lead to buildings being faltered by something called the pancake effect a good example of this is in my last blog the 2010 haiti earthquake, however, Port-au-Prince has a total population of around 704,776  compared to Istanbul's 14 million and growing at a rate or 400,000 a year which is 3.45%, this is the fastest growing metropolitan population in the world.

So what has Istanbul done to prepare for the next earthquake?

The city authorities have tightened building regulations so that they are more earthquake ready and there are calls to demolish tens of thousands of buildings to prevent them falling down and causing a risk to life , however will this all be done in time ?

One of the main problems is that people cant afford to move house to a more earthquake stable place or the cant afford to build earthquake resistant houses in the first place in the west on the city in the district of Avcilar on the European side of city there are hundreds of abandoned flats as people with money have moved out knowing that if an earthquake strikes the flats will most likely fall. 


In school children are taught how to evacuate in the occurrence of an earthquake, its the children that are more clued up about an earthquake they are taught how to secure objects so they don't fall when an earthquake strikes.