Year passes since devastating earthquake in southeast Türkiye

A year has passed since the devastating earthquakes in Türkiye, which claimed the lives of more than 53,000 people.

On February 6, 2023, earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 occurred in the Kahramanmaras province in southeastern Türkiye.

Tremors were felt in 11 provinces of the country and neighboring countries. Turkish authorities called the earthquake "the disaster of the century."

The two earthquakes, which occurred several hours apart and lasted a total of 105 seconds, killed 53,537 people and injured another 107,213. During the earthquakes, about 39,000 buildings were destroyed, and search and rescue operations were carried out in 26,000 of them. Among the dead were four Azerbaijani students.

Rock shifts due to earthquakes caused a huge crack 400 meters long in Hatay, a fault in the Nurdagi province in Gaziantep divided the village into two parts, the village of Cigli in Kahramanmaras shifted by 6.5 meters, and the village of Degirmenkaya by 6 meters.

After the earthquakes, the highest level of alert was declared in the country, level 4, and international assistance was requested. Search and rescue teams from 90 countries arrived in the disaster zone, of which Azerbaijan was the first to send its rescuers. A total of 725 people were sent to Türkiye, including a staff of 41 doctors.

Detachments of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Azerbaijan took part in both search and rescue and other operations. The last group to leave Türkiye were also Azerbaijani specialists who operated in the disaster zone until the first week of March. Azerbaijani rescuers recovered 53 people alive from the rubble.

In the earthquake zone, an assessment of the damage to 2,302,000 buildings and 6,227,000 private houses was completed; at the moment, the cleanup of the territory has been completed by 91 percent, construction of 307,000 buildings has begun, some of which have already been handed over to their owners.

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