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David Rothery, Professor of Planetary Geosciences, The Open University

Turkey-Syria earthquake: the scandal of not being prepared

Cleanup of the wreckage of a collapsed building in Diyarbakır, Turkey. Voice of America, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The magnitude-7.8 earthquake near Gaziantep that struck southeastern Turkey and neighbouring Syria on February 6, and the large aftershocks that followed, destroyed thousands of buildings and claimed tens of thousands of lives.

In response to criticism of the efforts to rescue buried survivors, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan reportedly said that it was “impossible to prepare for the scale of the disaster”. But is he right?

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