update3: More than 30,000 dead in Turkey and Syria after major earthquakes

The pics coming from Turkey are incredible! It's time to stop petty political bickering around the world and help these people.

 

Everytime I see an update the death toll keeps rising. This very well could top over 100,000 dead and especially in Syria we might never know the true death toll.

 

I hope these neighbors can band together and look beyond their minor differences and imaginary lines for once.

It'd be a nice thing to mend fences in light of this tragedy.

 

This is quickly becoming a historical event -- the scale of the area devastated is hard to imagine reminds me of a tsunami.

 

Are there building codes that would stop a 7.8 earthquake?

 

Made me think of this timestamped part of video covering the fall of the Colossus of Rhodes.

 

They had a second major quake not long ago of 7.5 magnitude.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/live-blog/turkey-syria-earthquake-live-updates-rcna69266

 

that was earlier today. All the video you see of buildings falling are during the 2nd quake. The first quake was when it was still dark outside, so not many videos

see timeline in OP

 

More than anything else, these disaster areas need manpower and heavy construction equipment asap to help with the search and rescue.

 

Over 3700 dead and counting. It was a huge shallow earthquake, the worst kind, followed by an enormous aftershock almost as powerful as the first blow. That caught hundreds frantically working to save those buried in the rubble of the original quake, creating still more victims.

Calling this "historic" is an apt description. Purely a guess on my part, but I think the death toll will end up being somewhere north of 5,000 before this is over. "Over" being the wrong word to use. For tens of thousands, this will never be over.

 

Yes and no. Depends how deep the earthquake is and how close to the epicenter. Generally the idea behind building codes isn’t to save the building but keep it standing long enough to get people out. Even in something like this the best building codes and most modern buildings won’t save everyone but they are likely to save a lot more.

 

Jesus...

 

Still don't much about Syria. Here's a thread on the logistics of response and notes airports and roads in NW Syria are out of commission:

 

Not surprisingly, some hospitals and medical facilities in the quake area had to be evacuated.