The

Afyon Province Afyonkarahisar Province ( tr, ), also called more simply Afyon Province, is a province in western Turkey. Adjacent provinces are Kütahya to the northwest, Uşak to the west, Denizli to the southwest, Burdur to the south, Isparta to the sout ...

of western Turkey was struck by an earthquake measuring 6.5 on 3 February 2002 at 10:11

local time Local time is the time observed in a specific locality. There is no canonical definition. Originally it was mean solar time, but since the introduction of time zones it is generally the time as determined by the time zone in effect, with daylight s ...

(07:11 UTC). It had a maximum felt intensity of VIII (''Severe'') on the

Modified Mercalli intensity scale The Modified Mercalli intensity scale (MM, MMI, or MCS), developed from Giuseppe Mercalli's Mercalli intensity scale of 1902, is a seismic intensity scale used for measuring the intensity of shaking produced by an earthquake. It measures the eff ...

. It damaged hundreds of buildings and caused the deaths of 44 people and a further 318 injuries.

Tectonic setting

Most of western Turkey lies in an area of

extensional tectonics Extensional tectonics is concerned with the structures formed by, and the tectonic processes associated with, the stretching of a planetary body's crust or lithosphere. Deformation styles The types of structure and the geometries formed depend on ...

that extends into the

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea ; tr, Ege Denizi (Greek language, Greek: Αιγαίο Πέλαγος: "Egéo Pélagos", Turkish language, Turkish: "Ege Denizi" or "Adalar Denizi") is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It ...

. The cause of the extension is thought to be the

rollback In political science, rollback is the strategy of forcing a change in the major policies of a state, usually by replacing its ruling regime. It contrasts with containment, which means preventing the expansion of that state; and with détente, w ...

of the

subducting Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at convergent boundaries. Where the oceanic lithosphere of a tectonic plate converges with the less dense lithosphere of a second plate, the ...

slab of the

African Plate The African Plate is a major tectonic plate that includes much of the continent of Africa (except for its easternmost part) and the adjacent oceanic crust to the west and south. It is bounded by the North American Plate and South American Plat ...

that dips northwards beneath the Aegean. The overall N–S extension has resulted in a series of NW–SE to W–E trending

seismically active An active fault is a fault (geology), fault that is likely to become the source of another earthquake sometime in the future. Geologists commonly consider faults to be active if there has been movement observed or evidence of seismic activity duri ...

normal fault In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

s with associated

rift basins In geology, a rift is a linear zone where the lithosphere is being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics. Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted depression, called a graben, or more commonly a half-graben wi ...

. The Afyon–Akşehir Graben lies in the hanging-wall of the low-angle Sultandağı Fault and contains nearly 1 km of late

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.58 million years ...

sedimentary fill. Part of this fault ruptured during a magnitude 6.0 earthquake in December 2000.

Earthquake

The earthquake had a magnitude in the range 6.2–6.7 . The observed

focal mechanism The focal mechanism of an earthquake describes the deformation in the source region that generates the seismic waves. In the case of a fault-related event it refers to the orientation of the fault plane that slipped and the slip vector and is ...

is consistent with normal faulting along a fault trending WSW–ENE, although the local trend of the basin-bounding fault is closer to WNW–ESE. The distribution of the aftershocks, however, is consistent with a rupture along part of the Sultandağı Fault of about 40 km in length. It also suggests that the rupture propagation was almost unidirectional towards the northwest, with the mainshock close to the southeastern end of the rupture. A large aftershock, measuring 5.8–6.0 , occurred roughly two hours after the mainshock near the western end of the Sultandağı Fault. Analysis of the

coulomb stress transfer Coulomb stress transfer is a seismic-related geological process of stress changes to surrounding material caused by local discrete deformation events. Using mapped displacements of the Earth's surface during earthquakes, the computed Coulomb stress ...

associated with the M6.0 earthquake on 15 December 2000 suggests that these stress changes triggered the 2002 mainshock. The epicentre of the mainshock lies near the termination of the rupture associated with the earlier earthquake, consistent with this interpretation.

Damage

There was significant damage in 8 of the 18 districts in Afyon Province and some damage in

Akşehir Akşehir is a town and district of Konya Province in the Central Anatolia region of Turkey. According to 2000 census, population of the district is 114,918 of which 63,000 live in the town of Akşehir. The town is situated at the edge of a fertil ...

Konya Province Konya Province ( tr, ), in southwest Central Anatolia, is the largest province of Turkey. The Province, provincial Capital (political), capital is the city of Konya. Its traffic code is 42. The Kızılören solar power plant in Konya will be ...

. A total of 4,051 residential and 339 commercial buildings either collapsed or were badly damaged. A further 10,402 residential and 884 commercial buildings suffered either low or medium levels of damage. The town of

Çay Çay is a town and district of Afyonkarahisar Province in the Aegean region of Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on th ...

suffered the most damage and had the greatest number of fatalities. The most damaged building type was the traditional Himis style, which consists of timber frames with adobe and rubble infill and heavy roofs. Collapse of this building type was responsible for causing most of the deaths and injuries in this earthquake.

References

External links

* * {{Earthquakes in Turkey 2002 disasters in Turkey 2002 earthquakes Earthquakes in Turkey 2002 in Turkey February 2002 events in Turkey History of Afyonkarahisar Province

Tectonic setting

Earthquake

Damage

See also

References

External links