Why Japan’s 7.6 quake wasn’t Turkey’s tragedy all over again

Last February, Turkey’s 7.8-magnitude temblor killed more than 59,000 people. The 7.6-magnitude quake that struck western Japan on Monday killed only 55.

Why did one nation experience only 0.1% of the deaths of the other?

In many ways, the countries are similar. Both have multiple active faults and a history of catastrophe. Both have histories of major and repeated geologic trauma.

But a comparison shows that their experiences are vastly different. The sobering challenge for the rest of the world is how to be more like Japan, and less like Turkey. While there is no way to prevent an earthquake from occurring, what can be prevented – or at least limited – is the scale of the calamity caused by these inevitable tremors.

Magnitude: 

Both earthquakes were enormous. And numerically, 7.6 doesn’t seem like much less than 7.8. But earthquakes are measured logarithmically. A magnitude 7.8 earthquake is 1.5 times bigger than a magnitude 7.6 earthquake — and 2 times stronger, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.  It is the strength, or energy release, that knocks down buildings. In Turkey, a powerful aftershock of magnitude 7.5 followed, destroying buildings that had already been rendered unstable.

Still, Japan has experienced previous earthquakes that far outmeasure Turkey’s, and also performed much better. Its enormous 2011 quake, for example, measured a stunning magnitude 9.1. That earthquake claimed about 15,000 lives, far fewer than Turkey’s. And most people were killed by a powerful tsunami.

Geography:

Japan, with 125 million people, has a much larger population than Turkey, with 85 million.

But Monday’s earthquake struck a peninsula, surrounded by water on one side. Japan’s Noto Peninsula is known for its rural landscapes, coastal scenery, morning markets and fine traditional lacquerware.

Turkey’s quake hit a landlocked and populated region on its border with Syria. Hardest hit was the city of Gaziantep, where millions of refugees of Syria’s civil war had sought shelter from that nation’s civil war. The earthquake stressed an already stressed landscape.

Political conflict: 

Unlike Japan, Turkey’s global rescue effort faced deep challenges. This delayed help to the injured, sick and dying.

The Turkish city of Gaziantep was “a region literally on the frontlines of humanitarian response,” according to Erol Yayboke, former director of the Project on Fragility and Mobility at the preeminant Center for Strategic and International Studies.

To make matters worse, many of the international aid groups that would have helped were already in Gaziantep — so suffered their own severe damage, he wrote.  In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the only United Nations-approved crossing to bring international aid into northwestern Syria was, for a time, not functioning because of damage in the area.

Getting help to the region was further complicated by Syria’s civil war, the division of territory in the region and and the acrimonious relations between President Bashar al-Assad and many Western nations, according to the New York Times.

In contrast, Japan is a model of economic and social stability, according to the World Economic Forum. The same collective nature that helped it successfully weather the COVID-19 pandemic — with widespread mask-wearing, limited layoffs and ]high employment rates — helps it respond promptly and effectively to earthquakes.

On Tuesday, just one day after the disaster, Japan organized and dispatched 10,000 of its military forces to help rescue and relief efforts.

Preparedness:

But the major difference is preparedness. Earthquakes don’t kill — bad buildings do. Japan has made seismic safety a national priority — creating a seismic building code that is considered the most stringent in the world.

Japanese media shows a series of large landslides, collapsed coastal roads, fallen trees and a fallen defensive sea wall. Other photos show flattened flooded streets and dozens of capsized boats. Buildings collapsed. But many of the deaths appear to have been caused by fire, not toppled structures. About 24 deaths were reported in the city of Wajima, where a large fire broke out in a market popular with tourists. More than 100 homes caught fire after the quake.

Waves were large, but to warn residents of tsunami risk, a bright yellow warning — “Run!” — flashed across Japanese television screens advising residents in specific areas of the coast to immediately evacuate. For people on high speed trains, service was safely suspended.

Japan has learned its lessons the hard way: In 1923, the famed city of Tokyo was destroyed by a 7.9 tremor, killing 105,000 people. Within one year, the Japanese government had already started creating its first building code for earthquake-resistant construction, marking the dawn of the world’s seismic structural design.

During its enormous 2011 quake, the damage in crowded Toyko was limited: High-rise towers oscillated alarmingly for several minutes but did not topple.

Japan experiences so many earthquakes that three specific methods of stabilizing buildings have been developed, which are integrated into the country’s building codes and are strictly enforced. At the minimum, beams, pillars, and walls have to be of minimum thickness to cope with shaking. Taller buildings use dampers to absorb energy. The tallest buildings are isolated from the ground by layers of lead, steel, and rubber.

Other nations have taken notice. Chile, which experienced the most powerful earthquake ever recorded by the USGS — the 9.5 magnitude Valdivia earthquake of 1960 — has also made significant investment in seismic design and regulation of strict building codes. Recent Chilean earthquakes have caused few, if any, deaths.

In contrast, many of Turkey’s causalities occurred in structures built with substandard materials and allowed to stand by government officials who failed to enforce building codes which require earthquake resistance, the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects’ Chamber of City Planners told the BBC.

The government has provided periodic “construction amnesties” — legal exemptions for the payment of a fee — for structures built without the required safety certificates, the BBC also reported.

In Turkey’s next earthquake, Turkish geologist Naci Gorur told the New York Times last year, collapsed buildings could leave tens of thousands of people buried under rubble and clog the city’s narrow roads, hampering rescue work and aid delivery.