An earth­quake with a pre­lim­i­nary mag­ni­tude of 6.2 shook Is­tan­bul and oth­er ar­eas Wednes­day, prompt­ing wide­spread pan­ic and scores of in­juries in the Turk­ish city of 16 mil­lion peo­ple, though there were no im­me­di­ate re­ports of se­ri­ous dam­age.

More than 150 peo­ple were hos­pi­tal­ized with in­juries sus­tained while try­ing to jump from build­ings, said the gov­er­nor’s of­fice in Is­tan­bul, where res­i­dents are on ten­ter­hooks be­cause the city is con­sid­ered at high risk for a ma­jor quake.

The earth­quake had a shal­low depth of 10 kilo­me­tres (about 6 miles), ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed States Ge­o­log­i­cal Sur­vey, with its epi­cen­tre about 40 kilo­me­tres (25 miles) south­west of Is­tan­bul, in the Sea of Mar­mara.

It was felt in the neigh­bour­ing provinces of Tekirdag, Yalo­va, Bur­sa and Ba­like­sir and in the city of Izmir, some 550 kilo­me­tres (340 miles) south of Is­tan­bul. In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Ali Yer­likaya said the earth­quake last­ed 13 sec­onds and was fol­lowed by more than 50 af­ter­shocks — the strongest mea­sur­ing 5.9.

The quake start­ed at 12:49 p.m. dur­ing a pub­lic hol­i­day when many chil­dren were out of school and cel­e­brat­ing in the streets of Is­tan­bul. Pan­icked res­i­dents rushed from their homes and build­ings in­to the streets. The dis­as­ter and emer­gency man­age­ment agency urged peo­ple to stay away from build­ings.

More than 150 in­jured

“Due to pan­ic, 151 of our cit­i­zens were in­jured from jump­ing from heights,” the Is­tan­bul gov­er­nor’s of­fice said in a state­ment. “Their treat­ments are on­go­ing in hos­pi­tals, and they are not in life-threat­en­ing con­di­tion.”

Many res­i­dents flocked to parks, school yards and oth­er open ar­eas to avoid be­ing near build­ings in case of col­lapse or sub­se­quent earth­quakes. Some peo­ple pitched tents in parks.

“Thank God, there does not seem to be any prob­lems for now,” Pres­i­dent Re­cep Tayyip Er­do­gan said at an event mark­ing the Na­tion­al Sov­er­eign­ty and Chil­dren’s Day hol­i­day. “May God pro­tect our coun­try and our peo­ple from all kinds of calami­ties, dis­as­ters, ac­ci­dents and trou­bles.”

Ley­la Ucar, a per­son­al train­er, said she was ex­er­cis­ing with her stu­dent on the 20th floor of a build­ing when they felt in­tense shak­ing.

“We shook in­cred­i­bly. It threw us around, we couldn’t un­der­stand what was hap­pen­ing, we didn’t think of an earth­quake at first be­cause of the shock of the event,” she said. “It was very scary.”

Senol Sari, 51, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press he was with his chil­dren in the liv­ing room of their third floor apart­ment when he heard a loud noise and the build­ing start­ed shak­ing. They fled to a near­by park. “We im­me­di­ate­ly pro­tect­ed our­selves from the earth­quake and wait­ed for it to pass,” Sari said. “Of course, we were scared.”

They lat­er were able to re­turn home calm­ly, Sari said, but they re­main wor­ried that a big­ger quake will some­day strike the city. It’s “an ex­pect­ed earth­quake, our con­cerns con­tin­ue,” he said.

‘My chil­dren were a lit­tle scared’

Ci­han Bozte­pe, 40, was one of many who hur­ried­ly fled to the streets with his fam­i­ly in or­der to avoid a po­ten­tial col­lapse. Bozte­pe, stand­ing next to his sob­bing child, told AP that in 2023 he was liv­ing in Bat­man province, an area close to the south­ern part of Turkey where ma­jor quakes struck at the time, and that Wednes­day’s tremor felt weak­er and that he wasn’t as scared.

“At first we were shak­en, then it stopped, then we were shak­en again. My chil­dren were a lit­tle scared, but I wasn’t. We quick­ly gath­ered our things and went down to a safe place. If it were up to me, we would have al­ready re­turned home.”

Turkey’s In­te­ri­or Min­is­ter Ali Yer­likaya said au­thor­i­ties had not re­ceived re­ports of col­lapsed build­ings. He told Haber­Turk tele­vi­sion that there had been re­ports of dam­age to build­ings.

The NTV broad­cast­er re­port­ed that a derelict and aban­doned for­mer res­i­den­tial build­ing had col­lapsed in the his­toric Fatih dis­trict, which hous­es the Blue Mosque and the Ha­gia Sophia Grand Mosque.

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Yusuf Tekin an­nounced that schools would be closed on Thurs­day and Fri­day in Is­tan­bul.

“In line with the need for a safe space, our school gar­dens are open to the use of all our cit­i­zens,” Tekin said.

Ur­ban re­con­struc­tion projects

Turkey is crossed by two ma­jor fault lines, and earth­quakes are fre­quent.

A mag­ni­tude 7.8 earth­quake on Feb. 6, 2023, and a sec­ond pow­er­ful tremor hours lat­er, de­stroyed or dam­aged hun­dreds of thou­sands of build­ings in 11 south­ern and south­east­ern provinces, leav­ing more than 53,000 peo­ple dead. An­oth­er 6,000 peo­ple were killed in the north­ern parts of neigh­bour­ing Syr­ia.

Is­tan­bul was not im­pact­ed by that earth­quake, but the dev­as­ta­tion height­ened fears of a sim­i­lar quake, with ex­perts cit­ing the city’s prox­im­i­ty to fault lines.

In a bid to pre­vent dam­age from any fu­ture quake, the na­tion­al gov­ern­ment and lo­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions start­ed ur­ban re­con­struc­tion projects to for­ti­fy build­ings at risk and launched cam­paigns to de­mol­ish build­ings at risk of col­lapse.

Jailed may­or ex­press­es sad­ness

Ekrem Imamoglu, the may­or of Is­tan­bul who was jailed last month on cor­rup­tion charges, re­leased a state­ment through his lawyers, ex­press­ing his sad­ness at not be­ing able to be with the city’s res­i­dents.

“As man­agers and ur­ban plan­ners who have ded­i­cat­ed their lives to dis­as­ter-fo­cused plan­ning in Is­tan­bul and who have strug­gled for this pur­pose, my great­est sad­ness is that we can’t be with you,” the may­or said.

Many view the ar­rest of the politi­cian, con­sid­ered a key ri­val to Er­do­gan, as be­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed. The gov­ern­ment in­sists the courts op­er­ate in­de­pen­dent­ly.

On Wednes­day, long queues formed at gas sta­tions as res­i­dents, plan­ning to leave Is­tan­bul, rushed to fill up their ve­hi­cles. Among them was Em­re Senkay who said he might leave in the event of a more se­vere earth­quake lat­er in the day.

“My plan is to leave Is­tan­bul if there is a more se­ri­ous earth­quake,” he said. —IS­TAN­BUL (AP)

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Sto­ry by MEHMET GUZEL and SUZAN FRAS­ER | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Suzan Fras­er re­port­ed from Ankara, Turkey. Robert Baden­dieck con­tributed from Canakkale, Turkey.