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| Horizon |
| Earthquake Storms |
Series 0, Episode 0
"When an earthquake hit Izmit the consequences were dire. Yet it had all be predicted a year earlier."
Episode Guide -
Quotes -
Analysis - Notes |
| Episode Guide |
Opens with a description of the Turkish earthquake and how the fire fighters were the only ones people could turn to. Then the narrator mentions that scientists could have detected what is known as an ‘Earthquake storm’ and the next city inline has 14 million people living it.
There is more description of the Earthquake is Ismit. But then it is mentioned that scientists calculated the earthquake was coming one year earlier. The calculations are now pointing to Istanbul. The idea of the earthquake storm is that one triggers another and so on.
They trace back the history of a giant earthquake which happened around 365 AD in an island of Crete. This was followed by disasters around the Mediterranean. It seemed one earthquake had done all this. But some did not agree as it was simply too big. In other research the dates for the destruction of the different cities did not match up.
There is a demonstration of how earthquakes work and the fundamentals of them. They debate whether the earthquakes around the Mediterranean where random or whether they trigged each other in an earthquake storm.
They head off to the San Andreas Fault in California. Equipment that monitors earthquakes is in Park Field however the earthquake, the biggest in 40 years, was in Landers a small town. Millions of dollars of damage was done and there was one fatality. Although it seemed to originally show earthquakes were random but it soon led to helping scientists prove the theory. As soon a large aftershock hit near the town of Big Bear.
The theory goes that when an earthquake happened, the energy released is transferred to somewhere else and that is where the next one is likely to strike. Software was produced to work this out ant it successfully calculated that the energy from Landers should have moved to Big Bear – as it did. However it was not 100% poof as it could have just been lucky. So they monitored for other aftershocks. They all matched up though. However it didn’t show how this happened over a longer period of time and therefore did not prove the existence of earthquake storms.
They needed a more dangerous testing ground. Turkey is in one of the major earthquake zones and the fault has killed almost 100,000 people in the last 100 years. Earthquakes seemed to move from one end of the fault and move down. The model successfully predicted the 1960’s earthquakes. They continued the model and predicted the next earthquake would hit in Izmit.
They published the theory in several publications but not that many people were interested and nobody took it seriously. As the start of the shown proved, this was a costly mistake to make. When the earthquake struck, the area was flattened within 45 seconds. After the earthquake scientists got to work in calculating what was going to happen next. The found it was a new area to the west. However they did not know the fault too well as it goes under the sea after Izmit.
They needed to work out what threat there was as Istanbul was in the red zone. Several nations joined together to start mapping the fault at the bottom of the sea. They took mud cores which revealed that huge earthquakes had previously struck the area.
However something needs to be done. The population is Istanbul is 10 times denser that Izmit and the death toll of a major earthquake could be well into the hundreds of millions. |
| Quotes |
Fire Captain: “This disaster caught Turkey off guard”
Fire Captain: “We pulled out more corpses then survivors” |
| Analysis |
| There is good news that something can be done. But it doesn’t mean anything unless something is actually being done. Are they doing anything? It’s only a matter of time if not. |
| Notes |
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