The powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked southeastern Turkey and northern Syria, killing more than 1,300 people, was well felt in many homes in Israel and as in similar cases in the past, it naturally raises fears of a devastating earth tremor here too.
"A strong earthquake can certainly inflict great damage in all parts of the State of Israel," Amir Yahav, director of the inter-ministerial steering committee for earthquake preparedness in Israel, told Hebrew-language Ynet Radio.
"Our situation in Israel is not encouraging to say the least. There are about 80,000 buildings in Israel that were built before a standard that requires preparing for earthquakes [was put into law]."
Yahav says that the ministerial committee responsible for the issue has not convened since 2016.
“The committee has to be convened again, there are issues we must look into and one of them is the issue of strengthening buildings and whether funds are allocated to this matter,” he says.
“The question of why the committee has not convened in seven years should not be addressed to me. There was high ministerial turnover during that period and one thing led to another that way.
One of the things we are doing now, for example, is very extensive work together with the Education Ministry. We train students how to react correctly during an earthquake using virtual reality. I hope that such an activity will raise public awareness regarding the need for earthquake preparedness."
Dr. Amir Sagi of the Geological Survey told Ynet that our region is prone to earthquakes, but this was one of the worst on record.
Dr. Ron Rabbani, an earthquake expert at Ben Gurion University, says that scientists can’t predict exactly when a powerful quake might hit our region but they can predict its epicenter. However, he says that a major earthquake hits Israel roughly once every 100 years on average, with the last one being in 1927.
Meanwhile, Jackie Levy, the mayor of the northern town of Beit She’an, sent an urgent letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after geologists warned the town and the surrounding area might face catastrophic consequences in the event of a strong earthquake.
“The writing is on the wall and its glowing red — an earthquake that will cause destruction, death and ruin in Beit She’an is not a fictional scenario but a tangible one,” he wrote.
"We call on the Israeli government to immediately budget plans that have already been approved to strengthen buildings in areas and cities that have been defined as dangerous during an earthquake.
The Cabinet must convene as it has done during the rocket threat from Gaza and the COVID-19 pandemic because the results in the event of an earthquake will be many times worse — thousands of casualties and that's in Beit She’an alone."