The battles in the ruins continue to fight, for the second day, rescuers, citizens and rescuers from all over the world in Turkey and Syriaafter two deadly earthquakes of magnitude 7.8 and 7.6 that claimed the lives of thousands of people.

At the same time, a New York Times analysis of the magnitude and depth of the earthquake’s source demonstrates the destructive power of nature.

Januna Attanayak, a seismologist at the University of Melbourne in Australia, said the energy released by the magnitude 7.8 quake was about 32 petajoules, enough to power New York City for more than four days.

“In terms of energy, the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that occurred is 708 times stronger than the 5.9 earthquake,” the seismologist said.

How destructive an earthquake will be depends on many other factors besides size, seismologists speaking to the New York Times said.

These factors are the population density of the area, the depth of the focus, as well as the quality of building construction.

“People in this area live in structures that are extremely vulnerable to seismic shocks,” the USGS report notes.

In a Twitter post, USGS seismologist Susan said the quake, although not the strongest to have occurred in decades, poses a particular danger due to its location and shallow source depth.

At the bottom of the scale, a magnitude 1 earthquake is almost imperceptible to humans. However, “a magnitude 7 earthquake has the energy equivalent of about 32 atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima,” Renato Solidum, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, told the Times in 2013.

An earthquake measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale in Turkey is classified as “strong”. Other earthquakes of similar magnitude occurred in Pakistan in 2013, when about 825 people died, and in Nepal in 2015, when about 9,000 people died.

^{Source: New York Times.}