[jacquesm]

This is really bad. The timing couldn't be worse, pretty much everybody was at home. The videos that came out so far are devastating, whole apartment buildings leveled with everybody in them, people trapped under the rubble and calling out for help.

Given the timing and the magnitude the first estimates of casualties seem surprisingly low, I really hope that they are right but there are some major cities right in the middle of this. Ugh.

[in_cahoots]

In my experience initial reports being low doesn’t necessarily translate into final casualty accounts. When the entire infrastructure is destroyed (see Haiti, the 2004 Christmas tsunami) counting the number of dead is much harder and isn’t the top priority.

On the flip side, I’ve often found that ‘missing person’ reports can overcount the number of casualties. Again, when infrastructure is destroyed or when there’s a locally-devastating disaster it’s hard to get an actual account of who was actually in the area when disaster struck.

[jacquesm]

I just looked at some of the photographs, the imagery is absolutely devastating.

I can't imagine < 1000's of dead.

[_hypx]

Hundreds of buildings have collapsed. Even a few thousand will be the best possible news.

[jacquesm]

More than 1700 buildings have collapsed according to some reports on Twitter.

[emodendroket]

If entire apartment buildings are collapsed I doubt the current casualty figures are going to be the ultimate ones.

[layer8]

The 1999 Izmit earthquake (similar magnitude, different region) had 17000 deaths. Hopefully less this time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Turkey

[jacquesm]

I remember that one. Lots of people here in NL lost family then. NL is home to 400K+ people with Turkish roots.