Published Feb 27, 2023 by JR Ancheta Ezgi Karasözen, a University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute research seismologist, was packing for a trip from her home in Colorado to Anchorage on a Sunday afternoon when her husband, Onur, came in.
There had been a devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake, he told her. She thought for a brief moment that he was telling her about a quake in Alaska, her destination.
No, he said, it had just struck their native Turkey and northern Syria, both 12 hours ahead of Alaska.
“He told me the magnitude and I was like, just wait a second, can it be 7.8? Is the magnitude correct? Is it going to be bigger? How did they estimate it?”
That was the seismologist in her. She soon learned the early morning quake occurred on a major fault, one she knew from her own research to be of a kind that can lead to catastrophic damage.
An email alert soon arrived from the U.S. Geological Survey confirming the 7.8 magnitude.
“And then I burst into tears,” she said. |