At the crash site, two months after the deadly earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, the EKPA Geology team, led by Efthymios Lekkas, was again discovered. The goal is to investigate the factors that led to such extensive destruction of the building’s infrastructure, as well as to scrutinize the identity of the faults that caused these unprecedented images with buildings that are still leaning today.

In this context, OASP President and Professor of Dynamic Tectonics and Applied Geology in the Department of Geology and Geoenvironment at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, together with Emmanuel Vasilakis and Spiridon lettuce they follow all developments very closely, both in the humanitarian / operational part, and in scientific.

“This is a very enjoyable mission in which we have much more convenience in terms of time compared to the previous one, where the events were still tense and dense. Now, with a more sober look, we have the opportunity to see what happened at all levels,” he tells K from Turkey, where Mr. Lekkas and continues: “This time we saw a lot of new things up close, both in terms of destruction in buildings and in terms of geology.”

He notes that the completely new data concern primarily a malfunction that was first discovered in a hard-to-reach place on Elbistan.

According to the professor, the identified rift surface has a shift of more than 5 meters and is located not in tectonic trenches or funnels, but on the crest of a mountain range. Another point, which was also recorded for the first time, is located to the south of it. Malatias. There, the end of a large fault 300 km long caused a strong deformation of the earth’s surface, as well as flooding of a significant part of the city.

“So our first major finding is that although we usually see faults inside ditches, at the borders of the plains etc.here we saw them “walking” along the ridge. These are two different errors in unexpected plates that we have just discovered, for the first time in the world..

These two new faults have changed the nature and typology of damage. In essence, the enormous damage caused is due to the coexistence of too many parameters and is associated with the passage of these new faults, liquefaction of the soil and intense deformations on its surface. All this created a very negative basis for the construction.”

As the professor characteristically notes: “In many places we saw that apartment buildings tilted. The ground they were founded on was liquid, almost wet.. Buildings seem to “float” and therefore lean in one direction or the other.” At this moment Mr. Lekkas, explains that indeed some of the buildings were very poor in terms of quality and construction, but some others were very well built, but nevertheless suffered significant damage. These buildings are of greater interest to a group of Greek researchers in Turkey.

As Mr. Lekkas: “In this vast area there are very old apartment buildings, from 1950, but mostly new ones 20 and 10 years old. In even more cases, they are brand new. In other words, we see apartment buildings that are only a year or two behind, and many other abandoned ones. And this is because in areas such as Adana or Kahramanmarasdevelopment in recent years has been explosive – from 200,000 inhabitants of the city to 700,000, within a few years”.

Research in target points and satellite images

The OASP President emphasizes that it was not by chance that the group began to “comb” the vast area affected by the earthquake. “There was information and knowledge from previous work,” says Mr. Lekkas and emphasizes that the researchers went “get acquainted” with specific areas.

OUR Emmanuel VassilakisAssociate Professor of the Department of Geology of the Department of EKPA and a member of the expedition – specializing in ground observation using modern technologies, in turn tells K that since the team members returned from the first mission before two months in Turkey, they immediately began to study satellite images high-resolution image of a vast area where two successive earthquakes occurred.

“Now we are here to validate, that is, the recognition on the spot of the results that we received in the laboratory,” he says.

In this case, according to Mr. Vasilakis, there was next: the big private companies that own satellites have given scientists too much data and too many satellite images valuable for laboratory observations. “These high-resolution satellite images helped us directly see areas that we could not visit due to inaccessibility in the first period after the earthquakes,” explains Mr. Vasilakis, adding that the discovery of two new faults changes the data in the field of applied tectonics geology.

“Satellite observation followed by research in this area is something we are already doing in Greece, however every new experience, whether from Greek or international space, strengthens our knowledge, while what we know on theoretical level, also confirmed then, in the field. In this case, geological phenomena are revealed in their entirety,” says the professor, finally mentioning that, in relation to the life of the inhabitants, moving from one point to another is now completely uncomplicated, and everyday life in the camps, on the contrary, is very difficult.