A note from Dr. Laurie Johnson, a participant at the recent UN International Recovery Forum, held in Japan, Feb. 2023:

Here is some summary info that the IRP Director sent me along with the link to the Forum videos: This year’s Forum received more than 1000 registrants from 126 countries, and welcomed more than 440 live participants, hailing from 70 countries. Participants included representatives of national and local governments, international
organizations, academia, civil society, and the private sector. The videos and presentations from the Forum have been uploaded to the IRP website and to IRP’s YouTube account for those who were unable to join us live during the Forum , here are a full conference video and speaker videos: https://bit.ly/3YbPesk

As of Feb. 17, FEMA is now involved in the major hazmat disaster in Palestine. This is unusual, because EPA had the lead as is typical of such events. See this explanation:

Ohio train derailment update: Gov. Mike DeWine announces FEMA to send team to East Palestine. The workers will “support ongoing operations, including incident coordination and ongoing assessments of potential long-term recovery needs.”

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From the LATimes: Survivors are still being found in Turkey’s earthquake rubble. How long can that go on?

From the WashPost: Earthquakes Destroy. People Rebuild. Cities are a form of life and they need constant care to stay strong. They didn’t get that care in Turkey.

An Excerpt: “According to The Associated Press, a Turkish government agency has acknowledged that more than half of all buildings in the country don’t meet earthquake standards.”

From the WashPost: Opinion: 3 charts show how better buildings save lives in earthquakes.

“Though it might take weeks or months to confirm the death toll across Turkey and Syria, the latest number has topped 36,000. This makes this month’s earthquake the deadliest in the region in more than a century. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said it was “not possible to be prepared for such a disaster.” Data comparing similarly seismic countries suggests otherwise. Take Chile and Japan….”

As of Monday Feb. 13, the news reports say that deaths in Turkey and Syria have reached 38,000 and are still raising. And various estimates for homeless people run as high at 5 million!

For emergency management personnel these numbers are incredible and beyond most planners expectations. It is worth taking some time to think about what it will take to cope with these outcomes.

From HSToday: PERSPECTIVE: Deadly Earthquakes in Turkey: How Endemic Corruption Worsens the Situation. The quakes were so large and shallow that they would substantially damage older buildings. However, the number of newly built yet devastated buildings is exceptionally high.

From CNN: The earthquake in Turkey is one of the deadliest this century. Here’s why

From Politico: Earthquake stuns Syria’s Aleppo even after war’s horrors. The natural disaster piled on many man-made ones.

From the Wash Post: Turkey’s earthquake death toll might be more than just a natural disaster.  An excerpt: Natural disaster is one aspect of the story. Turkey’s reliance on construction-driven economic growth, cronyism and willingness to ignore its own building standards is the other. The first was unavoidable. Did the second lead to mass casualties? At the very minimum, the Turkish people will have every right to demand a thorough investigation of precisely that question.

From The Guardian, more bad news: First Thing: Turkey and Syria earthquake death toll ‘could pass 20,000’

A more optimistic take:from the Wash Post: 5 lessons from past earthquakes to navigate Turkey’s tragedy