A doublet: a second M7.5 struck a crossing fault nine hours later, collapsing buildings the first quake had already cracked and burying the rescuers working them.
Rumble is a beautifully dark, free earthquake tracker for iPhone — live USGS data and quiet alerts when it matters near you.
DownloadThe 2023 Kahramanmaras earthquake struck on February 6, 2023, 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 37.23°N, 37.01°E, at a depth of about 10 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 56,697 people were killed.