On Sunday, we were told a storm named Barbara was on its way from Greece to Israel, and will hit us on Monday morning. In the meantime, at middnight, a deadly earthquake occurred in Turkey and was felt in the whole region: Syria, Lebanon. Cyprus, Israel.
On Monday, at about midday, a second quake struck. Thousands of casualties in Turkey and Syria. Countries are offering to send teams with humanitarian aid, but the wintry weather is not cooperating with the search and rescue efforts. Terrible tragedy!
Turkey has had her share of earthquakes in the past, and has learned important lessons from them, yet every new quake is surprising and devastating.
One thing is for sure, we israelis, are not prepared at all should a major quake strike closer to us. There's a lot of talk about strenghtening existing buildings. Some of it has already been done here and there. New buildings are checked, before approval, for specially designed features that will make them earthquake proof buildings. So they say. I don't know how seriously things are done, if at all.
There's ,of course, no complete immunity to these buildings, given the unpredictability of intensity and ocurrence of the earthquakes, but it's the best we can do to bring damage and loss of life to a bare minimum.
Anyway, things look quite scary.