Imran Abdullah-Istanbul
It was just over 11pm when an aftershock struck the European side of Istanbul, and the island spotted many residents and families descending into the park around the small lake of Kucukcekmece.
Although the tremor was light at 3.9 on the Richter scale, many families opted to spend the night in public parks and in front of houses in anticipation of more earthquakes on Thursday, when more than 100 aftershocks were recorded.
The effects of the fear caused by the earthquake that struck the city on Thursday noon had not disappeared. It was not hours since the strongest earthquake measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale. The earthquake, which was centered in the Sea of Marmara at 13:59 local time towards The Silivri region has shaken many buildings, especially west of European Istanbul.
Avcilar Mosque Lighthouse
On the main road linking Istanbul's neighborhoods is the Haji Ahmet Tucanmez Mosque, which was damaged in the earthquake that struck northwestern Turkey at the end of the 20th century, before its northern lighthouse collapsed on Thursday.
| Commercial Street in Avcilar and Haji Ahmed Mosque (Al Jazeera) |
Bahadir, who works as a salesman for the Turkish Smit (bakery) opposite the mosque and witnessed the lighthouse at the time of the earthquake, said people quickly moved out of houses and shops to the main street, and there were small stones over the building, which stands with a cart to sell bakery next to it.
He adds to the island Net that he witnessed an earthquake at the end of the nineties when he was a child at the age of ten years, and does not remember much of his tragedies, but he remembers that his seconds, which nearly forty were devastating and cruel to the population.
The 30-year-old Sarkan, who owns a car rental office in front of the Tucanmez mosque, says contractors and construction companies have a big responsibility for not adhering to earthquake-resistant building designs, adding that the building code that the municipality stresses is sometimes not implemented.
Sarkan heard successive "pops" in the walls of his office, and the old building suffered a longitudinal crack, but unlike the lighthouse he said he saw dancing at the time of the earthquake before its peak, no buildings were reported to have collapsed in the city and there were no fatalities.
Turkish Vice President Fuad Oktay said the earthquake in Istanbul on Thursday damaged 473 houses and injured 34 Turkish citizens.
At the press conference held by Oktay at the Presidency of the Turkish Emergency and Natural Disaster Administration (AFAD) in Istanbul, he explained that 34 Turkish citizens were injured by the earthquake, 24 of whom were discharged from hospital.
According to official data, 144 aftershocks were recorded in the Sea of Marmara after an earthquake on Thursday noon, the wreckage of the destroyed minaret was removed and police surrounded the mosque with a security tape.
The head of the Red Crescent wrote on Twitter that there is no truth to the rumors of a major earthquake last night, and called on people to sleep in their homes safely, knowing that the aftershocks (light) can last two weeks.
📍BİLGİLENDİRME |
It's the 1999 anniversary
On August 17, 1999, a magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the Izmit region near Istanbul, killing some 17,000 people and displacing nearly a quarter of a million people.
Although Izmit is located east of Istanbul, the devastation in Turkey's largest city is concentrated in the Avcilar district west of Istanbul, built on relatively weak land consisting of low sandy soil and sedimentary rocks overlooking the Sea of Marmara.
Mohammed Saleh, a café manager at Avcilar's main commercial street, says he saw the 1999 earthquake in Kucukcekmece neighborhood at the beginning of the 1920s, but in the nearby Avcilar district the situation was much worse. .
His nephew, Muhammad Sarat, intervenes, adding that in the same year (1999) another earthquake occurred in Duzja (referring to the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that was centered in the city of Duzja and killed more than 800 people) east of Izmit.
Saleh explains why real estate is relatively cheap in the Avcilar neighborhood, saying it is fear of a repeat of the 1999 earthquake. He adds that houses were so cheap here after the 1990s earthquake, some of them bought several houses at very cheap prices and later sold them at high prices.
The Avcilar district is located outside the Old City on the European side of Istanbul, and its ancient presence is attributed to it being the entrance to Istanbul and the beginning of the road to Europe.
However, Avcilar was a small coastal village surrounded by forests and greenery until the second half of the twentieth century, but has grown significantly urban since the 1980s, where it established factories and the large port of Amparly, tourist parks and crowded shopping areas, and a large campus of the University of Istanbul.
Residents in the neighborhood feared and spent the night in the coastal gardens waiting for the earthquake outside their homes, Saleh said. But he went up to his house and preferred to sleep, he said.