Large 7.2 Quake Hits Turkey...11/12/99

ANKARA, Nov 12 (AFP) -

At least four people were killed and more than 500 others injured when a tremor measuring 7.2 on the open-ended Richter scale struck the province of Bolu in Turkey's quake-flattened northwest on Friday, the Anatolia agency reported.

The Kandilli seismic institute in Istanbul initially said that the quake, with an epicentre in Bolu's Duzce town, measured 6.5 on the Richter scale, but later revised the figure up to 7.2.

The head of the institute, Ahmet Mete Isikara, explained that Friday's tremor, which struck at 6:57 p.m. (1657 GMT), was a fresh earthquake and not an aftershock of the August 17 quake, which killed nearly 20,000 people. That temblor measured 7.4 on the Richter scale and devastated Turkey's highly industrialized northwest.

An employee of the hospital in Duzce told Anatolia that a nurse was killed when an old building on the hospital complex collapsed in the tremor. Some 500 injured people were being treated in the garden amid a shortage of medical equipment, while an unspecified number of people with serious injuries were being transferred to Istanbul, he added.

A 39-year-old woman died of a heart attack in the town of Yalova in the Kocaeli province on the Marmara Sea coast, while two people were killed in the neighbouring province of Sakarya, the agency said. The agency added that at least 80 people were injured in Kocaeli and Zonguldak province on the Black Sea coast as they jumped off balconies and windows in panic.

Fires broke out in buildings in Bolu province while electricity was cut off and telephone lines were jammed following the tremor, making communication diffciculty with the quake zone, Anatolia said. In a live telephone interview with the NTV channel, the chief of police in Bolu appealed for ambulances but added that the main motorway between Bolu and Istanbul was closed.

The Anatolia news agency quoted intercepted police communication in Duzce as urging the dispatch of immediate help to the heavily-damaged region. "We are facing a big disaster," Turkish President Suleyman Demirel told reporters in Ankara. "It is a destructive earthquake. I hope it does not lead to great losses. "Although we do not yet have definite information, it is understood that some of our citizens have lost their lives and others have sustained injuries," he added.

The government immediately set up a crisis centre at Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit's office to cope with the aftermath of the quake. Ecevit said fire engines, doctors, ambulances, search-and-rescue teams and army troops were on their way to the quake zone from Ankara and other provinces. "We are having diffculty in transport as motorways have been damaged," Ecevit said. "We also cannot establish communication with Duzce."

The temblor was also felt across western Anatolia, the Mediterranean coast as well as Ankara and Istanbul, located some 600 kilometres from the Turkish capital, NTV said.