Enlarge / Search and rescue efforts continue at collapsed buildings in Hatay after 7.7- and 7.6-magnitude earthquakes hit multiple provinces of Turkey. (credit: Anadolu Agency )

Two days after a devastating earthquake struck , Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited one of the worst-affected areas and declared that it was “not possible to be prepared for such a disaster.”

Certainly the scale of the destruction was unforeseen. The death toll from the earthquakes of February 6, 2023, that struck Turkey and Northern Syria is still climbing. But one week on, it has been documented that over 35,000 people were killed , with more than 50,000 injured and over 1,000,000 receiving aid for survival in bitter cold conditions. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake hit while many were sleeping in the town of Pazarcık in Kahramanmaraş, Southern Turkey—the epicenter of the quake. It was followed nine hours later by a major aftershock in Elbistan, a town about 50 miles from the initial quake, sending buildings weakened in the first shock to total collapse.

The final death tolls are likely to place these two successive earthquakes among the worst natural disasters that have been witnessed in the world.

Enlarge (credit: Sefa Kart/Getty)

Android phones around San Francisco’s Bay Area buzzed with an alert on Tuesday morning: A 4.8 magnitude earthquake was about to hit. “You may have felt shaking,” some of the messages read. More than a million Android users saw the alert. And for some, it arrived seconds before the ground even started moving.

It’s not the first time Android devices have received these alerts, says Marc Stogaitis, the project lead for the Android Earthquake Alerts System. But because the Bay Area is so densely populated, the alert hit enough phones that the larger public took notice. Earthquakes have historically come without warning, catching people off guard and leaving them with no advance notice to drop and take cover. Alerts like this aim to take some of the unpredictability out of earthquakes—even if by just a few seconds.