Eduardo Salazar<\/a> telling you that a seismic alert went off and you should move to a safe area immediately. If you continued watching, you would have seen the anchor struggling to stay upright, with his studio lights and cameras shaking violently, still talking and telling his viewers to stay calm.<\/p>\nThe Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said the damage was very minor, there were no reports of casualties and the city\u2019s strategic installations such as the electricity, water system and the underground were all working.<\/p>\n
Mexico sits on top of three large tectonic plates. As a result, it is one of the world\u2019s most seismically active regions. Since 1887, Mexico has experienced 15 earthquakes with a magnitude of 7 or higher. Its capital Mexico City is very vulnerable to earthquakes, even if they originate far away because much of the city is built atop drained lake beds.<\/p>\n
Even though the Friday\u2019s earthquake centred near the Pacific coast, in the state of Guerrero, 265 km southwest, Mexico City felt it at the magnitude of 7.2. On September 19, 1985, Mexico City was devastated with another, stronger earthquake of a magnitude of 8.1 that lasted for 3 minutes. Some 10 thousand people died, houses and public buildings were destroyed.<\/p>\n
Since then, Mexico has established a Seismic Alert System (SAS) for Mexico City which gives about 60 seconds warning for earthquakes. Together with a strong public education programme for earthquake preparedness and regular drills, even less than a minute warning has been seen to help people take cover in a safer location inside a building.<\/p>\n
Even more importantly, a strict seismic code that requires all high-risk buildings to be constructed with steel and reinforced concrete means that the structures are earth quake-resistant. The private sector is just as aware of the safety rules and staff training for earthquakes as the public sector institutions.<\/p>\n
Of course, there is no fool-proof way of preparing for a natural disaster as we have seen in the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami. The Japanese are world leaders in earthquake preparedness.<\/p>\n
The rest of Mexico is not as well prepared as the capital, either. But what I have witnessed in Mexico City being shaken by an earthquake of 7.2 magnitude with no casualties makes me angry that in 2010 a magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed more than 300 thousand people in Haiti and in the 1999 earthquake in north-western Turkey, a 7.4 earthquake killed around 17 thousand people.<\/p>\n
The October 2011 Van earthquake caused more than 600 deaths and thousands of injuries. The depth and the magnitude were similar to the one we have just experienced in Mexico City.<\/p>\n
Earthquakes may be an \u201cAct of God\u201d but the death and destruction due to poor design and construction practices, widespread corruption and a lack of public education about natural disaster preparation are purely man-made.<\/p>\n
The World Bank says that \u201cpeople in developing countries are 6 times more likely to die from earthquakes than people in developed countries\u201d.<\/p>\n
Since the 1999 earthquake, the Turkish authorities have taken some steps towards earthquake risk mitigation. However, the level of disaster preparedness training offered to the public and the improvement in infrastructure along with reinforcement of existing buildings are nowhere near enough to manage the risk.<\/p>\n
Recent allegations of nepotism and sleaze involving the government and the construction industry do not inspire confidence that the next earthquake to hit Turkey will be any less destructive than the previous ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Friday, 18 April, at about 09:30 in the morning, I was sitting inside a minivan, parked temporarily among high-rise buildings on a central Mexico City street. First, the sirens went off. Then, the vehicle started shaking violently. The driver immediately opened the doors and asked us to leave. My fellow passengers, almost all of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}