Isn’t 7.3 an unusually strong earthquake for that region??
Perhaps I’m wrong, or caffiene-deprived, but it seems that all, or most, of the ‘devastating’ earthquakes in the northeastern Mediteranean region have been in the 5-6 range....
Banner only on msnbc.com right now. It’s kind of early for those that gather the news these days. Sunday Today is live, but, they have their canned marching orders before they can get to even mentioning this.
BREAKING NEWS: Turkey quake kills ‘many’ people, town’s mayor tells AP
It’s bad, but in that region (Greece and Turkey) it isn’t unusual.
No, M 7-8s are pretty common in Turkey and the Eastern Mediterranean from a historical perspective. The 1999 Izmit quake in NW Turkey was a 7.6.
A wide variety of earthquakes of this magnitude have struck Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Syria etc. particularly about 800-1,500 years ago.
Maybe, however, I don’t they have the building standards that we do..
They had a huge one in 99, near Izmit (one hour from istanbul, east). It leveled a lot of stuff.
August 17, 1999
Izmit, Turkey
7.6 quake
over 17,000 dead
Unofficial reports of 35,000 dead
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_%C4%B0zmit_earthquake