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Rebuild and carry on

Following the North Anatolian fault westwards, in line with the series of earthquakes that are slowly moving in the same direction, we stopped at the city of Erzincan.

Sitting firmly on the fault line, in 1939 Erzincan experienced seven tremors, the largest of which measured 8.2m on the Richter scale – the largest earthquake in Turkey in modern times, killing 33,000 people.

The damage to the city was so extensive that the city had to be completely abandoned and the city we now see today was founded a little further to the north. We couldn’t find any remains of the old city.
Erzincan also suffered a second major earthquake in 1992, measuring 6.2m in which 498 people lost their lives. As ever on this trip we are amazed at the tenacity and strength of people living on fault lines.