The Feb. 6 earthquake in Turkey and Syria was so deadly because the region sits on a boundary between multiple tectonic plates, while soil and building conditions make strong earthquakes more likely to cause damage.
More than 12,000 people were killed and tens of thousands left injured and homeless following a devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria on Monday .
As the death figures stand so far, the Nurdağı quake is the third-deadliest in Turkey in the past century, surpassed only by the 1999 Izmit earthquake, which killed more than 17,000 people, and the 1939 Erzincan quake, which killed nearly 33,000 people.But why do earthquakes in this region have the potential to be so deadly? The answer, in part, lies in complex plate tectonics, soft soil, and the uneven construction of quake-proof buildings.
Once the fault ruptured, the earthquake's catastrophic impact was magnified by several factors. The East Anatolian Fault snakes under a heavily populated region and Monday's quake was shallow, at just 11 miles below Earth's surface. This meant the energy of the quake's seismic waves hadn't dissipated much before it began to shake people's homes.
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