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Capital's buildings to be tested for earthquake resistance

26 May 2016 16:44 (UTC+04:00)
Capital's buildings to be tested for earthquake resistance

By Rashid Shirinov

Bulk of buildings located in Baku will be tested for seismic resistance. For this purpose, they will be equipped with special devices.

The Republican Seismological Center in cooperation with German experts will hold a relevant joint project. In its framework, the installed devices will detect power of earthquakes that they can withstand.

Gurban Yetirmishli, the director of the Republican Seismic Survey Center noted that not all buildings in Baku can resist the strong quakes. “There are buildings of the beginning of the 20th century. Also here some damaged buildings with cracks,” he said.

Yetirmishli added that the experts will detect dangerous ones and report the results to the Azerbaijani Emergency Situations Ministry.

Overall, the seismogenic zones with potential to produce dangerous force cover the whole country as the Alpine-Himalayan seismic belt passes through Azerbaijan. Therefore, the country is considered to be a seismically active region – a lot of earthquakes occur over Azerbaijan every year, however, majority of them are not felt.

The map of potential seismogenic zones of Azerbaijan was prepared earlier to detect the risky zones. The document reflects the seismic zones of the southeastern slope of the Greater Caucasus, Shamakhi-Ismayilli zone, Ganjabasar, northwestern zones including Sheki, Zagatala, Balaken, the northern zone of Guba, Siyazan, Devechi, Talysh zone, Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, and Azerbaijani part of the Caspian Sea.

The most seismically active zones in terms of the number of earthquakes and the releasing energy are Shamakhi and Ismayilli regions. The list also includes Ganja and Talish. The most powerful earthquakes in Azerbaijan in the past 15 years occurred in 2014.

Six earthquakes measuring over 5.0 on the Richter scale, releasing a large volume of energy, occurred in Azerbaijan that year. Overall, more than 8,000 earthquakes were registered in the country in 2014.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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