How powerful is a magnitude-6 earthquake as dozens injured in Greece and Turkey?
Two serious earthquakes struck Europe this morning, June 3, resulting in a teenage girl's death in Turkey, and dozens of injuries. A 5.8-magnitude tremor struck in Marmaris, and a more severe 6.2-magnitude quake occurred in Rhodes at around 2am this morning.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) received over 282 reports about the Marmaris quake, which had a depth of 74km. Guests at hotels in Rhodes reported 'violent swaying and shaking' as the tremor hit Greece, with the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) confirming its 6.2 magnitude.
The governor of Turkey's Marmaris municipality, Idris Akbiyik, confirmed that 69 people had been injured from jumping from buildings in panic, and a 14-year-old girl tragically died after being taken to hospital. The two earthquakes are thought to be related.
It comes after a series of quakes hit areas surrounding Greece recently, with a 6.1-magnitude tremor striking off the coast of Crete on May 22. A tsunami warning was also issued following this previous earthquake.
But as the incidents make headlines, questions are rising on how serious a 5.8-magnitude or a 6.2-magnitude is on the scale. So, how are earthquakes measured and how severe is a tremor with a magnitude of 6?
How are earthquakes measured?
BBC Bitesize explains that until recently, earthquakes were measured via a system called the Richter scale, which measures an earthquake's magnitude, meaning how powerful the tremor is.
Magnitude is measured using a machine called a seismometer which produces a seismograph, and the Richter scale indicates how powerful the quake is on a scale of 1-10.
The scale is logarithmic, meaning that an earthquake measuring magnitude 5 is ten times more powerful than an earthquake measuring 4.
Earthquakes measuring 1-2 on the scale happen regularly, and they are so small that people cannot usually feel them. Tremors measuring upwards of 7 are less frequent but very powerful, and can cause serious destruction.
Today, the magnitude of a quake is more commonly measured through the Moment Magnitude Scale - a method that uses the same logarithmic scale as Richter, but which more accurately measures the strength of larger earthquakes.
How serious is a magnitude-6 earthquake?
According to Michigan Tech, earthquakes with a magnitude of 6.1 to 6.9 "may cause a lot of damage in very populated areas". They also estimate that the planet sees around 100 earthquakes in this category per year.
To put the recent earthquakes in Greece and Turkey into context, the largest quake ever recorded was in Chile in 1960, which measured 9.5 on the Richter scale, and killed well over 1,000 people.
In 2023, a series of earthquakes in Turkey and Syria killed over 55,000 people. The highest magnitude recorded in these tremors was 7.8, and it was the strongest earthquake the region had seen for over 20 years.
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