2023 Turkey: Kahramanmaras; Syria Earthquake
Overview
One of the costliest disasters of the twenty-first century, the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck near Kahramanmaraş in February 2023 killed 56,697 people across southern Turkey and northern Syria and injured more than 119,000. Damage reached roughly 42.9 billion dollars, with some 542,000 buildings destroyed or badly damaged. The shallow rupture broke faults of the East Anatolian system, where the Anatolian block is squeezed westward between converging plates. Striking before dawn in winter, it flattened whole districts of modern apartment blocks and became the deadliest earthquake in modern Turkish history.
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Energy Released
503.9 atomic bombs
About This Earthquake
2023 Kahramanmaras; Syria, Turkey: M7.8 at shallow depth. 56,697 deaths — catastrophic toll. North Anatolian Fault system, Turkey.
Impact Details
| Injuries | 119,200 |
| Damage | $42,900M |
| Houses Destroyed | 542,461 |
| Houses Damaged | 1,474,182 |
Similar Historical Earthquakes
Frequently Asked Questions
The largest earthquake ever recorded was the 1960 Valdivia earthquake in Chile, at magnitude 9.5. It generated a tsunami that traveled across the Pacific Ocean and caused damage as far away as Hawaii and Japan. The earthquake killed approximately 1,655 people and left 2 million homeless.
The deadliest earthquake in recorded history was the 1556 Shaanxi earthquake in China, estimated at magnitude 8.0-8.3, which killed approximately 830,000 people. Many casualties resulted from the collapse of yaodong (cave dwellings) carved into loess cliffs. The 2010 Haiti earthquake (M7.0, ~316,000 deaths) was the deadliest in modern times.
Pre-instrumental earthquake magnitudes are estimated from written accounts of damage, felt reports, geological evidence such as fault scarps and liquefaction features, and tsunami records. These methods provide approximate magnitudes with typical uncertainties of 0.3-0.5 magnitude units.
QuakeFYI's historical database covers earthquakes from approximately 2150 BC to the present, with over 5,700 significant events. Written records from ancient China, Greece, and the Middle East provide some of the earliest accounts. Instrumental recording began around 1900 with the first standardized seismographs.
An earthquake swarm is a sequence of many earthquakes occurring in a localized area over weeks to months without a clear mainshock. Unlike aftershock sequences where one large event is followed by smaller ones, swarms have no single dominant event. They are often associated with volcanic activity or fluid migration in the crust.