Nationwide quake drill to be held: Minister
ANKARA
A nationwide earthquake drill will be held across the country on Nov. 12, the anniversary of the Düzce quake, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu has announced.
“On the anniversary of the Düzce earthquake, we will conduct drills in all parts of Türkiye at 6:57 p.m. Crash-trap-hold, we’re going to practice this,” Soylu said, speaking at the Disaster Communication Workshop organized by the Directorate of Communications and the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD).
It will be announced on radios and TVs, the minister noted, stressing that a message will be sent to all citizens at the same time thanks to a system established for this drill.
The defense industry has created an infrastructure that enables police and gendarmerie radios to talk to each other in the event of a disaster.
Türkiye is crossed by fault lines and is prone to earthquakes.
Last October, a powerful 6.6-magnitude earthquake struck the country’s third-largest city, İzmir, killing at least 115 people and injuring over 1,000 others.
In 1999, a magnitude-7.4 tremor hit the industrial province of Kocaeli, leaving nearly 18,000 people dead and around 45,000 others injured.
Nearly 16 million people were affected, with around 200,000 people becoming homeless.
The same year, another earthquake rattled the Black Sea province of Düzce on Nov. 12 at 6:57 p.m. local time with a moment magnitude of 7.2, causing damage and at least 845 fatalities.
The epicenter was approximately 100 kilometers (62 miles) to the east of the Kocaeli earthquake that happened a few months earlier.
