BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 11. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has shown the extent of destruction after the earthquake in Türkiye from space, Trend reports.
Images recorded by NASA showed the post-quake changes on maps of such Turkish cities as Kahramanmaras and Gaziantep.
The earthquake which caused widespread destruction in southern Türkiye killed tens of thousands of people. The depth of the earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 and subsequent aftershocks caused serious damage to homes and infrastructure there. NASA and other space agencies have received images of the destruction from satellites.
The map was created on February 8, 2023, based on data collected by the Japanese ALOS-2 (Advanced Land Observing Satellite-2) satellite with a radar sensor. The satellite observations were compared with previous data from April 7, 2021 and April 6, 2022 to identify areas that may have been most affected by the disaster. The photos showed severe damage of Islahiye, Kahramanmaras and Nurdagi districts.
Red pixels on the map showed severely damaged areas, while orange and yellow pixels represented moderately and partially damaged areas, respectively. Each pixel measured about 30 meters across.
According to NASA, the damage map provided critical information for disaster response, enabling the Turkish government and aid organizations to optimize their work and use resources more efficiently.
The earthquake hit southeastern Türkiye on Feb. 6, 2023. The earthquake occurred at a depth of seven kilometers in the Pazarcik region of Kahramanmaras Province. The provinces of Hatay, Gaziantep, Kilis, Osmaniye, Malatya, Adiyaman, Sanliurfa, Diyarbakir, Adana and Kahramanmaras were subjected to severe destruction.
The quake’s epicenter was located 26 km away from the city of Gaziantep with a population of about 1.06 million. Following the latest data, 20,318 people have been killed, and 80,088 have got injured in the quake.
