Powerful 6.6 magnitude earthquake hits Turkey and Greek islands

Turkey and Greece were battered by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake today which killed at least four people, flattened buildings and caused a mini-tsunami which flooded streets in horrifying scenes on the Turkish coast.

Debris was racing down Turkish streets after an apparent sea surge near Izmir where at least six buildings were destroyed and footage showed people climbing over the wreckage of collapsed multi-storey buildings. 

Turkey’s disaster agency said at least four people were dead and 120 injured in the earthquake, while at least four were wounded in Greece where the mini-tsunami reached the Greek island of Samos. 

Islanders were told to avoid the coast, while some fled their homes, and roads and buildings were damaged by the quake which was also felt in Athens and nearby Albania, North Macedonia and Bulgaria.   

Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency said Friday’s earthquake was centred in the Aegean at a depth of 10.3 miles. 

Turkey’s interior minister Suleyman Soylu said six buildings had collapsed in two parts of Izmir, while mayor Tunc Soyer said nearly 20 buildings had collapsed in the province. 

Pictures from the Turkish disaster zone showed smoke over the city of Izmir, debris being washed away by high waters, and dazed people trying to make their way through rubble piled high on the streets.  

TV footage showed rescuers being helped by residents and police using chainsaws as they tried to force their way through the rubble of a seven-floor building that had collapsed. 

Turkish media said the earthquake was felt across the regions of Aegean and Marmara, where Istanbul is located. However, Istanbul’s governor said there were no reports of damage. 

Soylu said there were no reports of casualties from six other provinces where the earthquake was felt but added there were small cracks in some buildings. 

Ilke Cide, a doctoral student who was in Izmir’s Guzelbahce region during the earthquake, said he went inland after waters rose after the earthquake. ‘I am very used to earthquakes… so I didn’t take it very seriously at first but this time it was really scary,’ he said, adding the earthquake had lasted for at least 25 to30 seconds. 

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that ‘with all the means of our state, we stand by our citizens affected by the earthquake’. ‘We have taken action to start the necessary work in the region with all our relevant institutions and ministers,’ he said.  

The European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre said the quake had an epicentre eight miles from Samos.

Samos’s 45,000 people were urged to stay away from coastal areas, Greece’s top seismologist Eftyhmis Lekkas told Skai TV.  ‘It was a very big earthquake, it’s difficult to have a bigger one,’ said Lekkas, adding that ‘a tsunami cannot be ruled out.

A tsunami warning was issued, with residents of the Samos area told to stay away from the coast. Water rose above the dock in the main harbour of Samos and flooded the street. 

‘The walls of some houses have crumbled and several buildings are damaged,’ the island’s deputy mayor Michalis Mitsios was quoted as saying by public broadcaster ERT. 

People rushed into the streets on Samos and other islands following the tremor, which Greek officials put at magnitude 6.6 and the US Geological Survey at 7.0. 

‘We have never experienced anything like it,’ said another local official. ‘People are panicking.’ Police said there was damage to some old buildings on the island, with no immediate reports of injuries. 

Turkey is on the 14-day quarantine list for British tourists, while Greece and most of its islands including Samos are on the approved list for travellers from England, with Scotland and Wales applying their own rules. 

Both countries reported aftershocks. 

Greece and Turkey are both situated in one of the world’s most active earthquake zones. In 1999, a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck Turkey’s northwest, killing more than 17,000 people, including 1,000 in Istanbul.

Another quake in 2011 in the southeastern province of Van resulted in more than 600 deaths. In Greece, the last deadly quake killed two people on the island of Kos, near Samos, in July 2017.