Today marks the two-year anniversary of the devastating Kahramanmaraş earthquake sequence. At 4:17 AM on February 6, 2023, a M7.8 earthquake struck near the border of Kahramanmaraş and Gaziantep provinces, followed by a M7.7 earthquake nine hours later and 95 kilometers to the northeast. The sequential earthquakes devastated cities and villages in southern Türkiye and northern Syria. The disaster resulted in over 53,537 reported fatalities, 107,204 injuries, and left an estimated 3 million people homeless in Türkiye. The impact of the earthquakes stretched across the border to Syria, taking approximately 8,000 lives and leaving thousands injured and homeless. The financial impact on the Turkish economy is estimated at nearly 10% of the 2023 GDP, amounting to approximately $105 billion USD.
Two years after the earthquakes, our thoughts remain with those who continue to be impacted. Through our Learning from Earthquakes (LFE) program, EERI remains committed to documenting and sharing lessons from earthquake-induced disasters that can help communities worldwide understand their earthquake risk and take actions to improve their resilience.
In an effort to better understand the recovery from these earthquakes, EERI partnered with the Social Science Extreme Events Research Network (SSEER) to conduct a follow-up reconnaissance trip to Türkiye in October 2024. The EERI-SSEER team spent 5 days in the field (from October 14-18, 2024), starting with one initial day in the capital city, Ankara, meeting with leadership at various government departments and civil society organizations. Following this, the joint team traveled to Gaziantep, Adıyaman, Golbaşı, Kahramanmaraş, Kırıkhan, Antakya, and Defne, many of the same cities and villages visited by previous EERI and SSEER teams. This was intentional, as the main goals of the deployment were to revisit damaged buildings and re-interview key members of government, business, and community organizations to document recovery progress over the 20 months following the earthquakes, as well as to understand the factors that facilitated or impeded recovery.
Read on for more about the report and data repository published today and an upcoming webinar with team members next week.
EERI-SSEER Report: 2023 Kahramanmaraş, Türkiye Earthquake Sequence: Observations of Recovery 20 Months After
This report summarizes preliminary observations of housing and business recovery in the provinces of Gaziantep, Kahramanmaraş, Adıyaman, and Hatay. The report provides an overview of the structure and processes that were put in place to support recovery after the earthquake, summarizes the team’s observations of progress made in redeveloping communities and restoring housing and businesses 20 months after the earthquake, documents observations of building recovery and reconstruction in urban and rural settings, and synthesizes key factors and barriers to successful recovery identified by the team, as well as general reflections and potential future studies.
Data Repository: EERI-SSEER 2023 Kahramanmaras, Türkiye Earthquake Sequence Reconnaissance DesignSafe Data Repository
Data in this repository include the engineering and social sciences data from the team. Photos from the mission are shared with relevant metadata (such as latitude and longitude). The social science interview questionnaire for the study of organizational response and recovery and de-identified notes from interviews are also shared. Data can be reused to inform similar research studies and further analysis.
Webinar: Findings from the Türkiye Earthquake Sequence Follow-Up Reconnaissance Team
Join us next week for a joint webinar from EERI’s Learning From Earthquakes (LFE) program and the Social Science Extreme Events Research Network (SSEER) network on Tuesday, February 11, 2025 from 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM PT. The webinar will share social science and engineering observations on recovery from the EERI-SSEER reconnaissance team: Michael Mieler, Burçak Başbuğ, Süleyman Çelik, Louise Comfort, Alpay Demiryurek, Ayse Hortacsu, Carlos Molina-Hutt, Sabine Loos, Halil Sezen, and Egemen Sönmez.
Speakers:
- Süleyman Çelik, Anadolu University
- Burçak Başbuğ, Middle East Technical University
- Carlos Molina-Hutt, University of British Columbia
- Egemen Sönmez, İzmir University of Economics
- Michael Mieler, ARUP, Learning From Earthquakes Co-Chair (moderator)
Anyone can register here (via Zoom) to attend the webinar. EERI members who wish to receive PDH credit should register via their member profile on my.eeri.org. To do so, log into your member account and click the “Register to attend” button on the event page.
Additional Resources
The Learning From Earthquakes website continues to maintain a virtual earthquake clearinghouse site with relevant resources related to ongoing studies of the earthquake.
The EERI Learning from Earthquakes program is funded through the support of EERI members and the generous contributions of individual donors to the LFE Endowment Fund.
