Turkey quake damage estimated to exceed $100 bn: UN

Turkey quake damage estimated to exceed $100 bn: UN
by AFP Staff Writers
Geneva (AFP) March 7, 2023

Damage from the catastrophic earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria last month has been estimated at over $100 billion for Turkey alone, the United Nations said Tuesday.

"Already it is clear that just the damages alone will amount to more than $100 billion," Louisa Vinton of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) told reporters via video link from Gaziantep in Turkey, adding that the recovery costs "will be on top of that".

The 7.8-magnitude quake that struck on February 6 and its aftershocks have claimed more than 45,000 lives in Turkey and 5,000 in neighbouring Syria.

The World Bank estimated last week that the devastating quake, which flattened entire cities, had caused damage worth more than $34 billion in Turkey, with recovery likely to double that sum.

But Vinton said the Turkish government, with support from UNDP, the World Bank and the European Union, had calculated far higher damage.

While preliminary, "it is clear from the calculations being done to date that the damage figure presented by the government and supported by the three international partners will be in excess of $100 billion," she said.

Once completed, this estimate will be the basis for a recovery and reconstruction donor conference in Brussels next week, she said.

Recovery costs, including efforts to build improved and more environmentally sustainable infrastructure, "will obviously exceed that amount", she said.

back better and greener, "will obviously exceed that amount", she said.

So far, she said, UNDP was "very disappointed and saddened" by the low level of response to funding appeals to date.

A $1 billion flash appeal made on February 16 is currently funded at just 9.6 percent of the total, she said.

Ten deadliest quakes of the past 100 years
Paris (AFP) March 7, 2023 - With a death toll standing at more than 50,000, the massive earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 and its numerous aftershocks are among the 10 deadliest of the past century.

- 1976: 242,000 dead, China -

A quake measuring 7.8, according to the Chinese authorities, (7.5 according to the US Geological Survey), strikes near the industrial city of Tangshan in northeastern Hebei province. The official death toll is given as 242,000 but is believed to be significantly higher.

Western experts put the toll as high as 700,000, which would make it the second deadliest in the history of mankind, after the huge 1556 disaster that struck northern Shaanxi province, with estimates of the toll put at more than 830,000 people.

- 2004: 230,000 dead, southeast Asia -

On December 26, 2004, a massive 9.1-magnitude earthquake strikes off the coast of Sumatra, triggering a tsunami that kills more than 230,000 people throughout the region, including 170,000 in Indonesia alone.

Waves 30 metres (100 feet) high, travelling at 700 kilometres per hour (435 miles per hour), swallow everything in their path.

- 2010: 200,000 dead, Haiti -

A magnitude 7 quake on January 12, 2010, devastates the capital Port-au-Prince and the surrounding region.

The quake cuts the country off from the rest of the world for 24 hours, killing more than 200,000 people, leaving 1.5 million homeless and shattering much of Haiti's frail infrastructure.

In October the same year, Haiti is also hit by a cholera epidemic introduced by Nepalese peacekeepers who arrived after the quake. It kills more than 10,000 people.

- 1923: 105,000 dead, Japan -

On September 1, 1923, two minutes before noon, a 7.9-magnitude quake shakes the Kanto plain in Japan.

The death toll in the quake and resulting fire, which destroys Tokyo, is initially put at 142,000 but later revised to 105,000 people left dead or missing.

- 1948: 110,000 dead, Turkmenistan -

On October 5, 1948, at least 110,000 people are killed in a 7.3-magnitude quake in and around Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, which at the time was part of the Soviet Union.

- 2008: 87,000 dead, Sichuan -

More than 87,000 people, including thousands of school pupils, are left dead or missing when a 7.9-magnitude quake strikes China's southwestern Sichuan province on May 12, 2008.

The quake causes outrage after it emerges that 7,000 schools were badly damaged, triggering accusations of shoddy construction, corner-cutting and possible corruption, especially as many other buildings nearby held firm.

- 2005: 73,000 dead, Kashmir -

An earthquake on October 8, 2005, kills more than 73,000 people, most in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province and the Pakistani-administered zone of Kashmir.

A further 3.5 million are displaced.

- 1932: 70,000 dead, China -

On December 25, 1932, a 7.9-magnitude quake kills around 70,000 in Gansu province, in northwest China.

- 1970: 67,000 dead, Peru -

On May 31, 1970, a 7.9-magnitude quake off Peru's north coast leaves some 67,000 dead, many in the mountain city of Huaraz that was buried by a mudslide.

- 2023: more than 50,000 dead, Turkey and Syria -

On February 6, 2023, a 7.8-magnitude quake strikes southern Turkey and neighbouring Syria.

The biggest quake in Turkey in nearly a century, which is followed by a 7.5-magnitude tremor, kills more than 50,000, according to a toll revised by AFP on the basis of several sources in late February.

Of the dead, more than 45,000 were in Turkey and around 6,000 in Syria.