The eastern start of the great North Anatolian rupture sequence that would march west for sixty years to strike Izmit — unleashed on a winter night in a blizzard. Cold and snow killed many who had survived the collapse itself.
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DownloadThe 1939 Erzincan earthquake struck on December 26, 1939, registering magnitude 7.8 (moment magnitude, Mw). Each whole step on the moment-magnitude scale is roughly 32 times more energy, so this released on the order of 501× the energy of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.
Its epicenter was located near 39.91°N, 39.59°E, at a depth of about 20 km — a shallow crustal earthquake. Shallow earthquakes like this release their energy close to the surface, which is why the shaking near the epicenter was so violent.
An estimated 32,700 people were killed.