Dear All,
I and three other persons from METU (two from Geology) have just returned from Bingöl after a
somewhat tiring trip to the area. We have been asked also by our University to prepare a short
first impressions type report for appropriate circulation. This means that this report, when it
is done, will need to be translated into English and expanded to contain more scientific data.
We hope to get this done very soon, probably by the first half of next week. This report will be
posted at www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwdmc as well as at Dept of
Geology, METU/EERC, and others we will then announce. We will also provide links.
Except for the sad case of the dorm building of the regional boarding school in Celtiksuyu
that collapsed, burying some 100 kids while they were asleep, this earthquake might have gone in
the books as a strong, local shock that caused sporadic damage in Bingöl, a city with a population
of about 70,000. In May of 1971 a M6.8 event had occurred in the very same location, causing
897 fatalities. We don't think it's the same fault (East Anatolian) this time, but a conjugate
one that intersects it very close to the city in the NW-SE sense. In the city proper we saw
about 15 total or near-total collapses. They estimated the number of deaths from those as fewer
than 30. There are a number of other buildings that have been damaged but are standing.
These will need to be retrofitted, but with the number of mandatory earthquake insurance policy
holders in the entire city totaling 280, I don't see how the replacement or retrofitting work
will be financed.
The school block adjacent to the dorm building also suffered near-total damage. (Both are
said to have been delivered to the Min. of Education in 1998, with construction started in 1996.)
Regional boarding schools are a clever way of providing basic education to children of rural
families that live in widely dispersed fashion in small hamlets (many with population less than
100) in Eastern Turkey. Kids can not bused to the facilities as in the US, but are allowed to
live there. In many cases the schools and the dorms are the first time that these kids see
working plumbing inside the buildings and central heating to heat them. The Government of
Turkey goes to great length and assumes the expenses of bringing education to the poor rural
families. I peered inside the school building. Its hallways were spotlessly clean, the desks
and customary tools of instruction brand new. The glazing on the windows was double because of
the harsh winter there. The building sits in the middle of a wide thinly populated almost
empty plain with breathtaking view of snowy mountains in the background near the confluence
of two rivers. The soil seemed to be NEHRP E/D: soft, water table at surface, ponds of water
everywhere. I am attaching a few pictures to this with some annotation:
- 704: collapsed bldg from mid-city area
- 674: dorm at at Celtiksuyu
- 685: power line with ruptured cables next to regional boarding school (ground motion
implications?)
- 688: Bingöl from boarding school (river bisect the city, river in foreground is one of two that
merge)
- 690: The other school building within city (not boarding but with identical plan and having
suffered identical collapse damage)
- 666: The branch building of Min of Publ Works (identical to one in Bolu in 1999, and studied by
Cagnan in her disseration)
- 659: inner courtyard from branch building of Min of Publ Works (same damage as four years ago)
- 648: collapse inside city
- 675: School building adjacent to fallen dorm block at Celtiksuyu
An identical school building collapsed in the same way at the edge of town (no dorm there
because students came from the city), but because of the time of the tremor no one died there.
I think if a few a few vital details had been taken care of, neither would have been lost.
Advice to travelers:
- Stay in Elazig, or Diyarbakir or even in Bingöl if you can rough it, and are given bedding.
We traveled from Malatya, a 3+hour ride over winding roads. Carry recent maps.
- The weather was very fine for us, but be prepared for rain.
- Take your own sandwiches with you. We starved because all fast food places were closed.
- GMS works fine.
- Renting a car would be OK.
Good luck everybody. More news later.
Good luck,
Polat Gülkan
