A powerful earthquake shook parts of Bulgaria, Türkiye, Greece, and Romania today, sending shockwaves through the region. 🏚️
Residents reported strong shaking, but so far, there are no major damage or injury reports. Authorities are monitoring aftershocks closely. 🙏
📍 Stay safe, follow official updates, and check on your loved ones.
Three more earthquakes hit western Istanbul published at 15:43
15:43Breaking
Turkey's disaster agency has just recorded another three earthquakes, all in Istanbul's Buyukcekmece district.
Their website has just crashed - presumably due to high demand - we'll bring you more details on the specifics as soon as we can.
17:15 Today's tremors 'not the big earthquakes we expect' - geologist
Turkish geologist and earthquake expert Naci Görür says today’s earthquakes happened on the Kumburgaz fault.
The Kumburgaz and Adalar faults are the closest to Istanbul, and both are key to the larger earthquake that has long been expected in the city.
Görür says in a post on X that today’s earthquakes are "not the big earthquakes we expect", which he thinks will be above magnitude seven, but they do add to the stress on the Kumburgaz fault and make it more likely to break.
He calls on the government, Istanbul municipality and the public to work together to prepare the city for earthquakes.
17:18 Nearly 1.5m homes were structurally unstable, official warned last year
Istanbul sits on the Northern Anatolian fault line so it is vulnerable to earthquakes. The city has seen deadly tremors before and its residents have long feared an even bigger one.
The Kandilli observatory has put the risk of Istanbul experiencing a 7-magnitude quake by 2030 at 64%.
In 1999, a 7.4-magnitude quake claimed 17,000 lives and last year Turkey's environment minister warned that Istanbul did not have the capacity to withstand another one.
"One in every five houses in Istanbul, almost 1.5 million, are considered structurally unstable," said Murat Kurum. The environment minister recently spoke of fighting earthquakes as a matter of national security.
The devastating twin quakes in south-eastern Turkey and Syria in February 2023 were of 7.6 and 7.7 in magnitude and left 55,000 people dead.
Stay tune for more updates....
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