Read the following articles about the 2023 Turkey-Syria earthquakes:
New York Times (2023). What we know about the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. [Link] Turkey-Syria earthquake: the scandal of not being prepared.
CBS News (2023). Why did the Turkey earthquake do so much damage? Many buildings collapsed like pancakes.
Turkey and Syria are located in a seismically active region of the world where damaging earthquakes (5.0 magnitude and higher) are relatively common. So, why aren’t buildings in the region built to withstand these kinds of
earthquakes?
How did planning failures prior to the earthquake impact disaster response in the region? Provide 2-3 examples.
In the first lecture, we discussed how the emergency management cycle is not linear. A community or country can go from disaster response (e.g., search and rescue, clearing debris from roads, setting up field hospitals) to disaster
recovery (e.g., replacing destroyed infrastructure, getting people back into permanent housing), only for a new perturbation to push them right back into the disaster response phase. When this occurs, the new shock often exacerbates an already difficult and fraught situation. How might the recent aftershock (6.4 mag) exacerbate already difficult conditions in the region in terms of disaster
response and recovery?
