A banana republic

Just by hearing the Red Cross official who estimated to a Reuters reporter on Jan. 16 that the quake’s death toll could be between 45,000 and 50,000 people, you can see that Turkey’s infrastructure was more prepared than Haiti for a natural disaster of this nature.

I used to tell my friends that I would never live in California because of the earthquakes there. Ironically I have ended up living in İstanbul, where it is predicted that there will be an earthquake of significant impact sooner or later.

If you have not been in Turkey for very long, you may not be aware that extensive research on earthquakes in the region has been conducted here since 1999. Ugur Kaynak and Simon Butterworth have been studying the fault zone and active seismic area around the Sea of Marmara. They explain that historically the North Anatolian Fault Zone has been the epicenter of many large earthquakes. In 1999 there were two large earthquakes located in the area just to the east of the Sea of Marmara. The first occurred on Aug. 17 in the eastern Marmara and the second on Nov. 12 near the city of Düzce.

According to their research, it looks like those of us who never wanted to live in California because of earthquakes now face a dual disaster: A large earthquake is expected in the Sea of Marmara in the coming years, and there has been much speculation about the possibility of an associated tsunami.

Maybe you are unaware that in 1958, the ferry Üsküdar was travelling across the İzmit Bay when a powerful wind blew up from the west. Large waves sank the ship, with a loss of over 350 lives. Kaynak and Butterworth believe that a landslide on the western flank of the Çınarcık Basin could produce waves seven to eight meters high at the eastern end of the İzmit Bay, inundating both rail and motorway routes on both the northern and southern shores.

In short, the tsunami risk in the Sea of Marmara is real and is one of the many factors that need to be considered in light of the earthquake threat to the region.

I find myself asking tough questions these days.

Not so much the standard ones, questioning God’s goodness when natural disasters occur, such as “Why does God allow natural disasters, i.e., earthquakes, hurricanes and tsunamis?” or “Why did God allow this act?”

My questions are more along the lines of what is being done to get us prepared for a major earthquake.

It’s true that many Muslims and Christians believe in creation. Christians believe this on the basis of Genesis 1:1 in the Bible, where it states that God created the whole universe and the laws of nature.

Personally, I don’t think that tragedies such as the 2004 tsunami in Asia, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the 2008 cyclone in Myanmar and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti were acts of God or Allah.

There are two areas really where the blame can be pointed for the loss of lives: The first is that hurricanes, typhoons and tornados are the results of divergent weather patterns colliding, earthquakes are the result of the earth’s plate structure shifting and a tsunami is caused by an underwater earthquake.

The second reason is because of humans. Haiti has had the difficulty of being reliant on just a few crops for its economic survival and a centralized government that is poor with no resources. On the other hand, in some cases, such as the earthquake in Turkey, greedy people had cut corners and buildings were poorly constructed -- the result was thousands of lost lives and homeless survivors.

I could deeply relate to a piece by Emily Troutman, who shared how she had been in Haiti just days before the earthquake compiling a photo journal and discussing the necessity of earthquake preparedness. She writes, “… [A]s we drove up the hill on John Brown Avenue; ironically, and terribly, it was just as we were passing the UN compound … [my friend said,] ‘We are due for one’.”

There was no plan in Haiti.

When the house starts to shake, let’s be sure there is a plan.