One of Turkey’s leading seismologists, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Doğan Kalafat (65), has been sent off to eternity. Following Kalafat, who listened to faults until the last moment of his life, Boğaziçi University and AFAD issued condolence messages. Known as the ‘Big Brother of the Observatory’, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kalafat was born on May 26, 1959 in Erciş, Van. Kalafat graduated from the Geology Department of the Faculty of Earth Sciences at Istanbul University in 1977 and completed his Masters Degree in the Marine Geology and Geophysics Department of the Institute of Marine Sciences and Administration at Istanbul University between 1988-1990. Kalafat started working as a geophysicist at the Seismology Laboratory of Boğaziçi University Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute in 1984 and served as laboratory chief in this department until 2004. Then, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Doğan Kalafat continued his duty as the director of the Regional Earthquake Tsunami Monitoring Center, which he started in 2015, until last June.
“THERE IS AN ENERGY DISCHARGE”
While we have met with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kalafat dozens of times in the last 10 years, every time we met, “We are monitoring the Marmara and Istanbul area in real time and continuously” We were getting the answer. In his statements shortly before his death, Professor Doğan explained the expected major earthquake in Marmara and its effects as follows: “Regular energy discharge and earthquake activity related to it continue in the Marmara region. Especially the Silivri Offshore-Yeniköy-Mürefte-Şarköy offshore, Çınarcık, Yalova offshore, Erdek and Gemlik gulfs are areas that have shown significant earthquake activity in the last year.”
“16 THOUSAND EARTHQUAKES EVERY YEAR”
“An average of 16,000 earthquakes are recorded annually in Turkey. This figure is 160,000 in Japan. An earthquake of magnitude 6 occurs on average every two or three years in Turkey. The northern fault branch in the Marmara Sea is not a single piece, but consists of pieces with different seismogenic properties.”
75 PERCENT BY 2040
“We predict that an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.2 in the Marmara Sea will affect 7 cities and settlements on the coast of Marmara, and that this earthquake will statistically occur with a 75 percent probability by 2040 and a 95 percent probability by 2090. This necessitates that the work to reduce the earthquake risk in the entire Marmara Region be continued day by day and especially that the earthquake-resistant building stock be melted down without delay.
THOSE STRUCTURES ARE STURDY
“There is no earthquake risk in the Bosphorus Bridges. There is no problem with the dams at the moment. It would be more accurate to evaluate them as risky structures rather than risky neighborhoods in Istanbul. Although historical structures such as Hagia Sophia, Suleymaniye, Sultanahmet, and Topkapi Palace are at risk of damage in an earthquake, their collapse is out of the question.”
While Professor Doğan explained that new buildings are also safe, “The viaducts, the Izmit Bridge, the 3rd Bridge, Marmaray, the metros, the planned Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant and strategic structures are designed to be immune to damage in an earthquake. “We have earthquake detection stations at 247 points throughout Turkey. The earthquake detection threshold of our seismic network has dropped significantly in recent years. In other words, as we have established earthquake stations, the sensitivity of earthquake detection has improved significantly in a positive way,” he said.
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