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EARTHQUAKES

Major Arctic quake rocks Norwegian island

A powerful 6.6 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Norway’s Jan Mayen island in the Arctic Ocean on Thursday afternoon.

Published: 30 August 2012 16:43 CEST
Updated: 30 August 2012 18:54 CEST
Major Arctic quake rocks Norwegian island
This picture from 2009 shows the new weather station at Jan Mayen, located beside a landing strip (Photo: Heiko Junge/Scanpix).

The quake’s epicentre was located on the ocean floor some 100 kilometres west of the island, seismologist Conrad Lindholm at the Norsar research foundation told newspaper Aftenposten.

The earthquake hit at 3.43pm Norwegian time at a depth of 8.6 kilometres, according to data from US Geological Survey.

There were no reports of any injuries among the 44 people on the island, but staff at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute’s weather station said they had witnessed the effects of the tremor first hand.

”The walls were moving and objects jumped off the shelves,” station manager Thor Paul Gjelseth told NTB.

Gjelseth said the weather station had seldom experienced a quake as powerful.

"It was a very, very powerful quake," Svein Rabbevåg, station commander of the Norwegian Defence Logistics Organisation, told Aftenposten.

"We haven't registered any injuries among the 44 people who are on the island, but there has been some material damage and there have been a few rock slides," he said.

A volcanic island, Jan Mayen sits in the Arctic Sea some 500 kilometres east of Greenland.

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EARTHQUAKES

Turkish community in Germany gathers to help earthquake victims

The earthquake in Turkey and northern Syria has shaken the whole of Germany - but especially those who have relatives in the disaster area. 

Published: 8 February 2023 12:16 CET
Turkish community in Germany gathers to help earthquake victims

In dozens of cities in Germany, donations are being collected for victims of the massive earthquake, which as of Wednesday afternoon had claimed more than 11,000 lives.

People are bringing tent stoves, flashlights, diapers, fleece blankets, and hand warmers. One of the many collection points has been organized by the German-Turkish care service Dosteli in Berlin.

At the governmental level, Germany — home to about three million people of Turkish origin — will” mobilise all the assistance we can activate”, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said on Wednesday.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had a call with Erdogan and sent his “deep condolences”, as a search and rescue team left Tuesday afternoon with 50 rescuers and equipment. 

​​The EU said it was “funding humanitarian organisations that are carrying out search and rescue operations” in Syria as well as providing water and sanitation support and distributing blankets.

Charities line up to help

Particularly in Berlin, where over eight percent of the population is of Turkish origin, people have lined up down streets to drop off supplies. But they have led large donation efforts in cities like Frankfurt and Hamburg, where several businesses like bars set aside space to collect supplies,

The Dostali team had been sorting clothes and hygiene items all night, packing them and loading them into trucks. “Almost the entire Turkish diaspora in Berlin was there,” one volunteer told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ)

The helpers organized themselves via appeals in social media. From the collection points, the donations are to be transported by trucks and planes to the affected regions. 

READ ALSO: Who are Germany’s foreign population and where do they live?

In response to an inquiry from the FAZ, Turkish Airlines confirmed that it was delivering donations from 14 countries to the Turkish crisis areas, Germany being one of them.

The Turkish community in Germany is well connected via social media – “and everyone wants to help,” said Kübra Oguz, a volunteer with the Puduhepa e.V., initiative founded by Turkish migrant women.

In order for this to happen in a targeted manner, she recommended directly donating money, which could then be funneled to buy food, hygiene products or shoes, depending on the need.

Several organisations in Germany and worldwide are also accepting donations for humanitarian aid, include UNICEF, Save the Children and Aktion Deutschland Hilft.

With reporting from AFP.

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