An earthquake measuring 6.0 has struck Istanbul, Turkey.
One of the residents said:
“I’ve been living here for six years, and I have felt previous earthquakes inside my building. It has tended to sway a little for a few seconds and then settle.
Now, what I heard and felt this morning was very, very different. The building really started to shake quite violently, and I could hear a sort of rumble. I must say, standing there, I was waiting to see the walls cracking around me — but fortunately, that didn’t happen.
I left the building quickly, along with all my neighbors. Here in my district, which is on the European side of Istanbul, people were running out of buildings, gathering in the streets, being careful to stand away from the buildings themselves.
There was a degree of shock that was very visible. I saw one woman in tears. People were calling relatives, getting calls from relatives, checking to see if they were okay.
The big quake you mentioned — the 6.2 — was the main one, but there were two smaller ones recorded before that. In fact, just in the last few minutes, I was briefly back inside my building to collect some equipment, and as I stood inside the doorway, I could feel another aftershock.
It was much weaker than what we had felt earlier, but it appears that the city has been fortunate, if I can put it that way, because these quakes and aftershocks were in the Sea of Marmara, which is off the coast of Istanbul to the west.
So it wasn’t actually inside the city, and that appears to be why we don’t have any reports at the moment of injuries, deaths, or buildings collapsing. If that had happened, we would certainly know by now, because the system here is quite quick and efficient, and the emergency disaster agency would put out notifications very fast.
It appears as if the city has had a lucky escape this time. But, of course, it renews the fears that people here live with — that the big one could be coming at any stage. And there will certainly be more fear here now of that happening.”
All of that coming to us from Istanbul, where two or three quakes were felt. However, the Interior Minister said in the last hour that there have been more than 50 recorded through the course of the day.
So, certainly, that will put nerves on edge in Turkey’s biggest city.
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