Twelve days following the Turkiye, Syria Earthquake, a rescue team freed two men and a teenage boy who were trapped beneath the rubble as the death toll surpassed 46,000.
The 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Turkiye and northwestern Syria on Feb. 6, devastated vast areas of both countries when two interlocking blocks of rock that form the Earth’s crust broke apart and slid past one another to create friction that resulted in the violent shaking that brought down thousands of structures without prior warning.
Despite the advances in the field of science, no predictor of earthquakes has been invented.
Strange wildlife behavior prior to an earthquake has been recorded as far back as 373 B.C., but scientists have not been able to use animal behavior as a reliable predictor of earthquakes.
The largest earthquake in the U.S. occurred in Alaska on March 28, 1964, when the Richter scale measured a 9.2 shaking that claimed the lives of 24 before the ensuing tsunami killed 124, 101 in Alaska, 13 in California, and five in Oregon.
The death toll in Alaska remained relatively low due to the sparsely settled territory.
While no tsunami was responsible for claiming lives in Turkiye and Syria, the destruction of structures was widespread, presenting a Herculean challenge for the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and the Turkiye Red Crescent to cope with the disaster.
Doctors Without Borders, a charity that provides humanitarian medical care, and the Global Red Cross have come to the aid of the two countries where millions of people have been displaced.
Turkey officially changed the spelling of its name to Turkiye Cumhuryeti (Turkey Republic) in 2022, and the spelling has been accepted by the United Nations and the U.S.
On Feb. 19, the U.S. State Department announced $100 million in earthquake relief aid for the people of Turkiye and Syria.
The largest earthquake recorded on the Richter scale in history was 9.5 in southern Chile on May 22, 1960. No accurate death count followed, but estimates range from 1,000 to 6,000.
