Four years ago the lives of these Turkish firefighters changed for ever
An earthquake of catastrophic size tore their city apart
Even after 72 hours of non-stop working day and night without any sleep
when we found someone alive it gave us such a morale
boost that we forgot everything
Although thousands died
many survivors owed their lives to the actions of these men and women
People were helpless and as the Fire Brigade
we were the only ones they could turn to
but there were times when even we felt helpless
I remember having to hide and cry secretly many times
But now a frightening forecast suggests it is only a matter of time
before these fire-fighters are needed again
Scientists have identified a new phenomenon called an earthquake storm
and one is blowing across Turkey
If their forecast is correct then next in line is a city of 14 million people
On August 17th 1999
at just after three in the morning
a massive earthquake struck the Turkish city of Izmit
Thousands of people fled as their homes collapsed around them
I couldn't fully understand what was going on
I didn't realise it was an earthquake as I wasn't fully awake
Mum was crying and she said Ömür,the house is going to collapse
and I replied don't worry Mum
just hold me tight and that was the last conversation we ever had
The earthquake claimed the lives of some 25,000 people
The destruction spread over hundreds of kilometres
and much of the area was reduced to rubble
People were so shocked
Buildings had collapsed
Some of them survived,but some were still under the rubble
Some of them managed to get out of their home
and they just stood there completely dumbfounded
They didn't know what to do and could not think of
ways to help the trapped victims
Everyone was in shock
For the people of Izmit the disaster was totally unexpected
but what they didn't know was that a year earlier
the entire disaster had been forecast
We made the calculations, we knew that Izmit was dangerous
Our work showed that this area was at risk
an earthquake would come and that tens of thousands of people were likely to die
And yet that warning was not heeded
Few preparations were made,few contingency plans were put into place
When the Izmit earthquake happens
there are two sorts of feelings it sort of arous
arose in me. One was frustration
The other one was anger,anger with myself
anger with others because sort of
we knew it was coming and yet nothing had been done
Now the same scientists who highlighted the threat facing Izmit
have made another forecast
If they're right the danger could be heading for another city
a city much bigger than Izmit,a city with over 14 million people:
Istanbul
because scientists believe that Turkey is in the middle of a new phenomenon
where one earthquake triggers another and then another
Some are calling this an earthquake storm
The trail of clues that led to the discovery
of the earthquake storm began here in Crete
2,000 years ago the Greek island was one of the key
trading centres in the Mediterranean
but it was shattered
when the island was apparently struck
by the single biggest earthquake in recorded history
Evidence for that huge event is everywhere
This line here separating the light rock
from the dark rock is the ancient shoreline
and it carries on along this coast at the same level
Years ago the sea would have been up here lapping against
the rocks here and then something dramatic happened
One day the land suddenly rose up by about 6m here and the sea just dropped
A drop of six metres is the mark of a truly great disaste
A sudden jump of a coastline by this size really is
a telltale signs of a massive earthquake
Archaeological evidence showed just how devastating
this one event apparently was
With an earthquake of this size it just crushes towns in seconds
When the earthquake starts to stray the first few things
the walls start to go,the roof starts to come down
and anyone that's underneath is just crushed
What we're looking at here is crushed skeletons lying underneath masonry
and roof tiles and,and in amongst this all we've got columns fallen down
we've got pottery,everything else.This is everyday life
just crushed by an earthquake
And amongst the remains lay a vital clue as to when the earthquake took place.
This particular coin is dated to Contantius II
and that puts it roughly about 360AD.
Now this coin was found in the skeletons of the people crushed under the ruins
and what that means is the earthquake destruction
is dated to shortly after360AD
Ancient writings provided more evidence for the disaster
and dated it precisely to July 365AD
and for centuries many scholars found signs that the destruction
from the 365 event had spread far wider than just Crete
Terrible disasters took place all of a sudden throughout the world
Shortly after first light preceded by heavy and repeated thunder
and lightening the whole stability of the Earth was shaken
As more historical evidence was discovered around the Mediterranean
more damage was attributed to this one huge event
Cities 1500km apart appeared to have been struck by the same earthquake
A destructed Roman villa in Sicily
a destroyed Roman city in Libya,a destroyed Roman city in Cyprus
destroyed buildings in Alexandria,all of these have been put together
to generate this just ginormous earthquake that struck the length
and breadth of the Mediterranean
It seemed that few places in the Mediterranean escaped this destruction
Its range was so enormous this one earthquake became known as
the Universal Event
This was a truly giant earthquake
In fact,in terms of human history this was the biggest earthquake
the Mediterranean had ever seen
But despite all the evidence for this one massive earthquake
there were some who had their doubts
It was just too big
Historian Emanuela Guidoboni has studied ancient earthquakes
for decades and was troubled by the idea of this Universal Event
The area of damage was enormous
but it just didn't add up because the damage area extended
from Cyprus to Sicily,North Africa,Crete,reaching as far as Southern Italy
It simply wasn't credible
Intrigued Emanuela re-examined some of the historical texts
She was drawn to one writing in particular
The scholar Libanius wrote an epitaph for the death of
the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate
In this epitaph for Julian he depicts these great images of earthquakes
that shake the land and gives examples of Libya,Sicily,Greece
Like a horse tossing its riders she has destroyed a great number of cities
many in Palestine and all those in Libya
The greatest cities of Sicily lie in ruins
as does every city in Greece except one
Many historians believe the epitaph referred to the 365 event
but Emanuela found something that didn't quite fit
The dating of Libanius's text is fundamental for
understanding the earthquake of 365
Libanius wrote the epitaph for Julian on the death of the Emperor
That is in May 363
In other words,Libanius had written his epitaph two years
before the Universal Event
and there were other writings that didn't make sense
It seemed that other earthquakes had been misdated
There had been seven earthquakes before 365 and three afterwards
so in 12 years there were 11 earthquakes
almost one earthquake a year
There was a seismic crisis in the Mediterranean
For Emanuela the theory that one single earthquake had wiped out
most of the Mediterranean in 365 had to be wrong.
There had been no Universal Event
Instead,it appeared that a cluster of separate earthquakes
had exploded across the region in a storm
each event seemingly triggering the next
It was an ingenious idea,but the suggestion that one earthquake
could set off another had always been regarded as scientific nonsense
Earthquakes are one of the most studied natural phenomenon of all
In the last 100 years they've claimed the lives of over
one million people and many more have been left homeless
Although extremely complex,scientists are beginning
to understand what causes these events
They know that most earthquakes strike where the Earth's
great continental plates push against each other at fault lines like this
They also understand how they happen
Well this is an earthquake machine
and we know the Earth to be composed of 12
or so plates and the plates are in constant motion,which is represented
here by the winch,and along the boundaries of all of
these plates are faults and this is a fault where the sandpaper
meets the brick in frictional contact
and the rubberiness of the Earth,represented by this elastic cord
stores the stress that builds up along the boundaries of these plates
and eventually the stress overcomes the frictional resistance
and we have an earthquake
But these faults stretch for thousands of kilometres
Pinpointing precisely where an earthquake will strike has always been a mystery
We know there's going to be big earthquakes over time
We just don't know exactly when they're going to happen
They could happen 10 minutes from now,they could happen 10 years from now
There's just no way to predict it
The one thing they did know was that smaller tremors called aftershocks always
followed a main event, but finding a connection between large earthquakes
years apart had proved impossible
Scientists had to accept that the planet's most destructive
tremors struck randomly and were totally unpredictable
Basically I'm throwing darts at a map and so the whole world of earthquakes
was viewed as dart throws that were independent in which nothing about the last
earthquake was going to condition my ability to say
very much about the next earthquake.
So the idea that earthquakes were random became the accepted view.
The trouble was the historical evidence suggested that
large earthquakes were very much connected.
We're finding these earthquake clusters at other times in human history
We've got them in the 18th century and the 15th century in Turkey
and people are even suggesting that the end of the Bronze Age civilisation
across the whole Mediterranean region could have been due to one
big earthquake cluster,so the big question is:
is that just random is that just chance
or we actually get a process where one is triggering
the other which is triggering the other
The archaeological evidence was suggesting one thing
but the scientists could just not explain it.There was simply not enough evidence
To understand how earthquakes might interact they needed
far more data than the historical records could provide
There was one obvious place to look:
the San Andreas fault in California.
One of the most active earthquake zones in the world this great scar
on the Earth's crust was created when one continental plate clashed with another
Seismologist Sue Hough has been fascinated by thus area all her life
I've been driving all over California looking for places like this
places where you can see evidence of faults in the ground and what's remarkable
about this place is that usually when plates slide past each other the
effect on the landscape's very subtle and here you can stand not only in
a fault zone,but actually on a plate boundary and that's really remarkable
You can go a few steps over here and you run into the Pacific plate
and that continues all the way to Japan almost
A few steps in this direction and you run into the North American
plate which keeps going all the way to New York
so you have massive tectonic plates on either side and this is
the one place where they meet and this is
the place that great earthquakes are going to happen
What makes the San Andreas so notorious is that sitting
at one end is San Francisco Bay
The six million who live here know an earthquake could happen at any time
Famously one struck the city in 1906 killing over 700 people
Another hit in 1989.This time over 200 people lost their lives
The earthquake hit at the start of San Francisco's rush-hour and on a key double
deck motorway in Oakland the top tier collapsed trapping hundreds of cars
on the lower tier on a mile-long stretch
With so many lives at stake
understanding how earthquakes behave along the fault is critical
This has made the San Andreas one of the most studied faults in the world
and along it there is one place more closely observed than anywhere else:
Parkfield, the earthquake capital of America
Parkfield is wired with a huge network of high-tech equipment
John Langbein is one of those in charge of these
sophisticated earthquake monitoring device
Here at Parkfield we have a variety of different instrumentation
some of which include seismometers which measure
vertical and the horizontal motion
This is a GPS unit.This is a two-colour EDM
This is a a creepmeter and across the hill we have the deep drilling site
And the reason Parkfield was the hub of earthquake activity in California
was because it had suffered from earthquakes with unusual regularity
The last one was in 1966
the prior one was in '34 and the one prior to that was in '22
but extending over a longer period of time they appear
to be roughly every 22 years
On that basis it meant that the next one was expected around 1988
By 1987 much of the equipment was in place and Parkfield was ready to capture
an earthquake as it happened
Then the wait began
1988 arrived.They waited and they waited,but the year passed without event
1989 nothing happened.1990 nothing happened.1991still nothing happened
Then in 1992 something did happen
California was hit by the most powerful earthquake in 40 years
The only trouble was it wasn't at Parkfield. It was more than 400km away
and struck the small town of Landers
The small desert community of Landers where the pavement ripped
and scattered like someone shuffled a deck of cards
Before today few people probably had ever heard of Landers,California.
Now the community has made seismic history
The largest amount of ground movement in a California
earthquake in over 100 years
Geologist Sue Hough felt the tremors from 100km away
The Landers quake where I felt it,it was like somebody picked up my house
all of a sudden and just started shaking it back and forth
It, the power in it is just remarkable
It comes out of nowhere and the,the energy involved is just staggering
One person died and 171 people were injured
There was million of dollars' worth of damage and the fact that Landers
was hit and not Parkfield seemed to show just
how unpredictable earthquakes could be
but Landers was not the dead-end it first appeared
In fact,it was to give scientists their best insight into how one earthquake
could set off another and it would bring them closer
to understanding the earthquake storm
because three hours after Landers a huge aftershock struck 40km away
near the town of Big Bear
Holy shit!
This footage was taken at a nearby observatory as the earthquake hit
What happened to the telescopes?
Destroyed. Go,go,go, come on.It may fall off.I got it on tape
Convinced the two events were linked,geophysicist Ross Stein
was determined to find the mechanism for how Landers had triggered Big Bear
The argument of people who held the earthquakes were independent and random
was basically to dismiss the presence of aftershocks
just say well let's just skim those off the record of earthquakes
and what's left over is random and that seemed ludicrous to me
because about a third of the earthquakes in any earthquake
catalogue are aftershocks
but when I began to look I saw that aftershocks were occurring all over the place
very,very far from the fault that ruptured and so aftershocks were the clue
that we needed to follow up,to figure out how earthquakes interacted
And his team had a great opportunity
Instruments around the state captured Landers and the aftershocks
that followed in extraordinary detail
The scientists knew how deep the rupture went
where the fault had broken and precisely how far it had slipped
They had numbers for everything.
Data is king in earthquake science.It trumps theory,it trumps everything
When we have great data we really can develop a deep understanding
Nothing exceeded or met the quality of data we had for Landers
Never before had their been so much information about two earthquakes
so they set about looking for any connection between Landers and Big Bear
They had been working on a computer model that they hoped
would illustrate how one earthquake could trigger another
The idea behind it was remarkably simple
Go,come on
As an earthquake strikes and the fault lines pull apart the system release
a huge amount of pent-up stress
Move it,come on
Their theory was that as the earthquake releases this stress it is redistributed
to areas close by seen here in red
These are the likely areas where the next earthquake should take place
the trick was to find out where these red zones might be
To do this they began to feed the data into their computer
The model had to take into account hundreds of calculations about
how much the fault had slipped,how deep underground the rupture had occurred
and the elasticity of the Earth's crust
So the way we set this software up was to give us a visual sense in which areas
were more likely to produce earthquakes and were more
hazardous were turning red and areas that were farther from failure were blue
Finally the model showed where the stress from Landers had been transferred
The area to the west lit up in red
We were hunting for the possibility that Big Bear occurred in a region
one of these red lobes where this stress was jacked up
by the occurrence of the Landers earthquake
And sure enough slap bang in the middle of the red zone sat
the Big Bear earthquake
Having Big Bear land in the middle of our red blob was very exciting
but that in itself doesn't clinch the case because Big Bear could have
landed there by accident and that's always a possibility and so what we were
to depend on were not just that one earthquake,regardless of its size
but the 3000 or 4000 other aftershocks that occurred in the first few weeks
Were those also occurring in the red zones?
Once again they returned to their model
They set about plotting every single aftershock that rippled out from the Landers
quake and,just like Big Bear,most fell in the red zone
We came away from this experience feeling that Landers had taken a possibility
a possible set of interactions and turned it into a probability
It now looked to us like this kind of earthquake interaction was likely
Landers was a scientific breakthrough
It gave the most dramatic evidence of how one big quake could trigger another
Landers was really a landmark event in giving us this incredible data set
which showed us how different large earthquakes interact and letting us explore
the mechanism of this interaction in detail
It was the best example so far of how the transfer of stress
could trigger a large aftershock
However,it did not show how one event could set off larger earthquakes across
longer periods of time.It did not prove the existence of an earthquake storm
To show this scientists had to test their model on somewhere
even more dangerous than the San Andreas fault
Turkey is in one of the major earthquake zones of the world
Here millions of people live under the threat of one of
the most treacherous faults on the planet
The North Anatolian fault slices through the top of the country for over 1000km
For centuries earthquakes along this fault have torn the region apart
In the last 100 years alone it has claimed the lives of nearly 100,000 people
Seismologist Celal Sengor knows it as well as any
The North Anatolian fault seems to display a cyclic behaviour
It looks as if earthquakes start at the east,they migrate west
then there's a period of quiescence.It starts again migrates west
there's another period of quiescence
This pattern heading from east to west attracted earthquake
hunters from around the world
Among them was Geoff King
He became fascinated by a study of the fault that suggested these earthquakes
might be triggering each other
This study began with an event that happened over 60 years ago
In 1939 a devastating earthquake struck the city of Erzincan in eastern Turkey
The earthquake that occurred in Erzincan in 1939 was the start of a sequence
of earthquakes that passed right along the North Anatolian fault
It was a major event that killed tens of thousands of people
Though there was very little data from the vent
there was enough to make an educated guess as to where the stress had gone
Using the same model that had shown the Big Bear and Landers connection
the red zone produced from Erzincan lit up an area to the west
Tragically three years later in 1942,an earthquake
struck near the town of Tokat.The model seemed to be working
After the Tokat earthquake stress was transferred to the west
The next earthquake was to the west
Then a series of earthquakes struck westward along the fault
the last in 1967 near Adapazari
The model showed that each event had occurred right
in the middle of the red zone
The earthquakes seemed to be triggering each other
like a set of falling dominoes
Following the Erzincan earthquake a series of events zipped
or rather unzipped the fault right the way along its length here
with stress being transmitted from one to the next
in a most spectacular fashion
These events were not aftershocks
and they were separated from each other by years
An earthquake storm appeared to be blowing across the region
but forecasting earthquakes after the event was relatively simple
A better test would be for scientists to use the model
to forecast where the storm would strike next
Our objective was to go from the 1967 earthquake to the west and to the south
and include all the other earthquakes for which we had historical
information in order to assess where stress had been transferred
and what was the likely earthquake future for those regions
And when he plugged in the data the red zone lit up over the Bay of Izmit
home to nearly half a million people
The red zone was right over Izmit and the Bay of Izmit and we knew
a major fault capable of catastrophic earthquakes
passed right through that region
Geoff and other scientists were so convinced the model
was working papers were published forecasting where
the next earthquake would likely strike
They could not say when,but they spelt out the specific threat to Izmit
A catastrophic earthquake seemed to us inevitable
and this had to be published
This was published in the scientific literature
but then it was also published in the Turkish popular press
the popular scientific journals, even in a newspaper
in the scientific supplement of a newspaper
I must confess even when I read that I said oh wonderful
you know,scientific prediction,but it did not occur to me to say my God
we've got to do something about it
The publication created only a ripple of interest
and for the people of Izmit life continued as normal
Most had no idea that the ground they now walked on
was under extraordinary stress
and then in August 1999 at just past three
in the morning Geoff King's forecast came true
45 seconds later much of the city and the surrounding area lay in ruins
The quake was so huge that buildings collapsed nearly 100km away
Despite the warnings the area was totally unprepared
Fire Chief Emin Pehlivan and his team were just not ready
I could say me and my team we did our best under the circumstances
and I am proud of that
We did a lot
We stretched resources to the limit
but this disaster caught Turkey off-guard
The rescue services had been given neither the equipment
nor the manpower to deal with the disaster
When we pulled out dead bodies or heard about them
it was equally devastating
There were times most of the time, we pulled out more corpses
than survivors and felt completely broken down
Each time we heard through the wireless that someone had been pulled out alive
a man,a woman aged this or that,we felt wonderful
All of us in the headquarters shouted out of joy
as if we had won a victory and hugged each other
Among those trapped was Ömür Kinay
She and her mother had been caught in one of the many collapsed buildings
I tried to make out the voices I knew.I heard babies crying
I was lying on top of my mother.I was trying to hold her hand
talk to her but she didn't respond
This is the very moment of her rescue
She was finally found nearly three hours after the fault had ruptured
but her ordeal was far from over
I warned them when they were digging close to my head
Then they dug the area below
I could move my left hand I managed to get it out through a hole
and they dug around it
They removed the concrete with a crane
removed my mother
My hair was still under the rubble The man started crying
He said we can't get you out my child,your hair is trapped
I said cut it He kept crying and said I can't cut this beautiful hair
Ömür was rushed to hospital knowing nothing of her mother's fate
Her visiting family kept any news from her
I learned about the loss of my mother after about 40 days.
My family couldn't bring themselves to tell me.My aunt was with me
She was the one looking after me
One day I said,I asked her to take my Mum's photo
They didn't even bring me a photo She started crying
My cousin left the room and I realised Mum was dead
The exact number of casualties from the Izmit earthquake is still not known
but some estimates suggest that perhaps 25,000 people died
Hundreds of bodies are still unaccounted for
but for Geoff King, one of the scientists who had made the forecast
the Izmit earthquake was a bittersweet moment
He had been proved correct
but he now realised that use of the model came with enormous responsibility
As the scale of the disaster became clear you know
we were clearly right in our prediction, but this is on the one hand do
you want as a scientist to be right
but on the other hand you hope you're not right because you realise
that the red areas that you calculate represent many deaths
tens of thousands of potential deaths
Now it really did seem that an earthquake storm was heading across Turkey
. It was vital to forecast where it would hit next
Well after the Izmit earthquake we had important new data
I mean we could immediately expand the studies that we were engaged in to see
what would happen next and what was likely to happen next
so following the earthquake we immediately accelerated our work in this area.
Geoff King and his team set to work to try and find where the stress had moved
As they put the new data from the Izmit quake into the computer
an area to the west again beamed red
This time though things were not so straightforward
Izmit had been forecast because scientists knew the exact nature of the fault
running through the area,but now they could not tell
The fault that moved in the Izmit disaster passing under this road.
It then at this point it goes off-shore under
the Marmara Sea and completely disappears
The extent of any danger in this newly stressed red zone
depended on understanding the exact nature of the fault
Before the 1999 Izmit earthquake happened
we knew very little about the Sea of Mamara
The North Anatolian fault we know that enters at one end exists the other
but in-between we really didn't know much more
What made this all the more urgent was the fact that
when they ran the computer model at the edge of their newly plotted
red zone was one of the greatest cities in the world:
Istanbul
With so much at stake it was crucial to understand the fault in intimate detail
Just how big a threat was there to the city?
Soon the Italians,French,Turks and Americans
set about making the fault at the bottom of the Marmara Sea
one of the best known on the planet
The first thing we thought we had to do was to map the sea
to know where the different features on the bottom because
in a sea the ocean is not active like on land
so you preserve the trace of faulting in a much better way
Gradually the fault began to reveal its secrets
Mud cores taken from the sea-floor revealed the huge quakes
that had struck the area in the past
and the seismic signals indicated that
the whole area was still very much alive
Other results showed just how vast the faulting systems was
We,we found this long valley that cuts through the whole two-third
the western two-third of the Mamara Sea a spectacular valley
that we did not expect and that was obviously a very active fault
Although a picture of the fault's activity was emerging
the exact structure of the fault remains unclear
but what was known was that an active faulting systems stretching nearly
the length of the Mamara Sea sat a mere 20 kilometres from Istanbul
A big rupture along this fault whatever its precise nature
could be a massive disaster
The earthquake that we expect would happen close to Istanbul will be as big
or bigger,than Izmit. Izmit killed 20,000 or even 30,000 people
The population density around Iz,Istanbul is ten times greater
The scale of the catastrophe to a European city is almost unimaginable
What makes this forecast so worrying is that many buildings
have not been built to withstand a disaster of this kind.
We are now in one of the poorest parts of Istanbul
You can imagine that the buildings around us are not of the best quality
When the earthquake hits parts of these buildings will fall down
people will be trapped in them.Some of the people will be able to get out
Some of these streets have natural gas pipelines going under them
They will burst right. You'll have fires rising
People will try to run away,they'll be ruined,they will try to clamber up
Rescue units will try to reach them.It will be complete
mayhem in Istanbul if that happened
No one can yet tell when the earthquake storm will strike
The forecast simply cannot do this.It could be in 100 years time
it could be tomorrow
The scientists have at least identified where it is likely to hit next
This means there is still time to prepare
The stress has been building up in Istanbul
We know there's going to be an earthquake
We don't really know when there's going to be an earthquake
but we know it'll be a major earthquake
Buildings can be improved, construction can be modified
emergency services can become better organised
There are very many things that can be done and this will bring
the death toll down by ten times, or even 100 times
and it is completely possible and it is economically feasible
So the forecast comes with hope
There is a chance this time that the people of Turkey
can be prepared where the disaster strikes