8 March 2010 Elazig-Kovancilar (Turkey) Earthquake: Observations on Ground Motions and Building Damage

An earthquake of MW = 6.1 occurred in the Elazig region of eastern Turkey on 8 March 2010 at 02:32:34 UTC. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) reported the epicenter of the earthquake as 38.873°N-39.981°E with a focal depth of 12 km. Forty-two people lost their lives and 137 were injured during the event. The earthquake was reported to be on the left-lateral strike-slip east Anatolian fault (EAF), which is one of the two major active fault systems in Turkey. Teams from the Earthquake Engineering Research Center of the Middle East Technical University (EERC-METU) visited the earthquake area in the aftermath of the mainshock. Their reconnaissance observations were combined with interpretations of recorded ground motions for completeness. This article summarizes observations on building and ground damage in the area and provides a discussion of the recorded motions. No significant observations in terms of geotechnical engineering were made. The major tectonic structure in Turkey is the north Anatolian fault zone (NAFZ), with right-lateral faulting extending from Istanbul in the west to Karliova in the east. During the twentieth century this fault zone has produced several large earthquakes ( MS > 7) with surface rupturing with a westward migrating sequence as demonstrated in Figure 1 (Barka 1996; Utkucu et al. 2003). Around the Karliova region, NAFZ joins the southwest-trending east Anatolian fault zone (EAFZ). The EAFZ is predominantly left-lateral strike-slip in nature, but its faulting is less continuous and less localized than that of the NAFZ (Ambraseys 2009). The EAFZ has nucleated relatively small magnitude earthquakes in the twentieth century (Figure 1). Recent GPS data indicates that the slip rate in the EAFZ has an upper bound of 8±1 mm/year (Ambraseys 2009). The epicenter (by USGS) of the 8 March 2010 Elazig-Kovancilar earthquake is in the segmented fault region