The Lack of Disaster Resilience in a Lonely City Dersim (Tunceli), Eastern Turkey

Dersim is located on the eastern part of Turkey and facing major earthquakes. The city is surrounded by four mountains ranges and delimited by different fault segments of the North and East Anatolian Faults. The Yedisu Segment is defined on the North Anatolian Fault Zone (NAFZ) which produced an earthquake of Mw: 7.2 in 1784, while the Bingol Fault which is aligned on the Eastern Anatolian Fault Zone (EAFZ) generated an earthquake of Mw 7.1 in 1866. The Nazımiye Fault parallel to the NAFZ in the south and the Malatya-Ovacık Fault extending along a NE-SW direction on the South of the NAFZ are also active faults which are expected to produce earthquakes greater than 7.5 in the near future. Besides the size of damage due to earthquake hazard in the residential area, it is thought that the city will also be exposed to secondary hazard such as landslide, rockfall, avalanche triggered by an possible earthquake.

Besides the importance of the fault activation, stress change and the earthquake repeat time in the study area, it is aimed in this study to simulate some hazard models and evaluate their dimension. For this purpose, we conducted a field campaign during 2022 and acquired microtremor and ambient noise data at 250 points in an area of 250x250 m grid size. The results were discussed in response to fundamental frequency, amplification and vulnerability maps. Our primary results show that the city is in a high risk location facing serious potentially damage due to a possible earthquake.

Another purpose of this study is to draw attention on how “solidarity” is importance in disaster resilience. The present study is conducted with the collaboration of the local government and limited possibilities. Unfortunately, we have no emergecy funding or financial support for this earthquake hazard study. Therefore, we will invite you to a broader solidarity to manage on this important task.