2011 Turkey Earthquake Pictures

I got these pictures below from national Geographic channel. The Turkey earth quake yesterday,24 October 2011, is not a bigest one, but it was add a new list of big earthquake this years.

cbc.ca article news about this earthquake.

Desperate survivors of a powerful earthquake in eastern Turkey dug into the rubble with their bare hands Sunday, trying to reach those trapped and injured. The quake collapsed dozens of buildings and killed at least 138 people, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, though the death toll was expected to rise.

Erdogan said 93 people died in the city of Van and 45 in the nearby town of Ercis, but at the very least, that tally seemed to exclude a child reported dead in the neighbouring province of Bitlis, while hundreds more people remained unaccounted for.

State-run TRT television reported inmates escaped from a prison in the region soon after the quake hit.

People were still trapped under rubble overnight, Erdogan said. More than 350 survivors sustained injuries.

Several aftershocks were reported late Sunday, including a 6.0 magnitude temblor that struck six kilometres southeast of Van.

Officials in the mountainous eastern region, one of the country's poorest, were among those fearing the earthquake's toll will be much higher.

The Reuters news agency quoted a local crisis centre saying that nearly 600 have been injured and another 400 have been reported missing.

About 45 buildings, including a student dormitory, collapsed in the most powerful quake to hit this part of Turkey in at least a decade, Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay said.

The earthquake struck eastern Van province, close to the Iranian border, at 1:41 p.m. local time, Turkey's National Earthquake Monitoring Centre said. The centre reported the quake's magnitude as 6.6, while the United States Geological Survey said it measured 7.2.

Atalay said 25 to 30 buildings collapsed in Ercis, near the Iranian border on Lake Van, and about 10 in the city of Van to the south. Video from Ercis, home to about 80,000 people, showed panic-stricken residents running through the streets in clouds of dust.

National geographics article...

The Turkey earthquake, one of the most severe in the country since 1999, was centered just outside of the provincial capital of Van (map), near Turkey's border with Iran. The quake was followed by multiple aftershocks, including one that registered as a magnitude 6.0, according to CNN.

The disaster has so far seen a death toll of almost 300 people, and the number continues to climb. Tens of thousands of people are also homeless due to the quake, and rescue workers are setting up tents and providing supplies such as blankets and heaters to help people survive outside in the mountainous region's near freezing temperatures. (See aerial pictures of the aftermath of last year's Haiti earthquake.)

"It is a very urgent situation," Hakki Erskoy, a disaster manager for the Turkish Red Crescent, told the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper. "Right now, we are facing a race against time to provide shelter for people."