If You're Wondering Where The TV Shows Went, Yes They Are On Hold Due To The Earthquakes
Geçmiş Olsun, Türkiye
As earthquake rescue efforts in Türkiye and Syria expand, and news starts to trickle in from the less-populated areas, the true scale of the destruction there becomes apparent. While survivors trapped for over 100 hours are still being found, these miracle rescues will only get rarer as time goes by. From Australia I can do little more than donate to aid agencies, and signal-boost ways for others to donate too.
This disaster is a very big deal. Two massive earthquakes like this in quick succession is very unusual. The aftershocks are still continuing; at the time of writing the USGS shows six aftershocks in the fault system, between magnitude 4.1 and 4.9, in the past day. This means survivors may still be reluctant to sleep anywhere but under open sky, and outside temperatures are freezing (-3°C [26.6F] in Gaziantep on Friday).
One reason why the quakes were so deadly is the effects of shaking on soft soil. These two maps from the USGS show how huge areas were at risk of landslides or soil liquifaction. If you havent heard of that last one, this fascinating video from the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand has a really simple demonstration:
Large-scale rearrangments of the geology underneath cities can render whole areas uninhabitable; just look at the port city of Iskenderun, which is now apparently located below sea-level in many parts:
Hence many of the effects of these earthquakes will be with us for a long time. In the short term, there are disruptions to many services, such as the TV programming this blog depends on. Gladly, some disruptions are due to valuable resources such as caravans and generators being taken from the film sets and shipped into the disaster zones, where they can benefit the survivors.
Thus, the episode of Kuruluş: Osman that was scheduled for Wednesday evening did not air. If you search on Youtube for this episode 116, you will find many fake videos, and I clicked on one of them so you don’t have to. Featuring a very professional title thumbnail and a realistic 2h 15min runtime, the video turned out to be nothing but a montage of screenshots from old episodes, with voiceover from some random guy. I must quote from his very polite legal disclaimer below the video, because it’s funny:
I declare that all slideshow belong to me. Photos all are taken from Google Image search and using the advanced image search options.All images were fairly used during the making of this video for entertainment purposes. We do not mean to victimize anybody emotionally. Thanks to Google for providing this beautiful and related pictures.
Hopefully we will all recover from any unintended emotional victimisation, while we await the eventual screening of the real episode 116. For now, the list of highest-rating TV shows looks like this:
For those who can’t read it, it’s all news and special earthquake coverage.
By the way, I’ve not heard that any TV actors were killed or injured so far. *Update* Inevitably, deaths from within the world of TV actors are now being reported:
Çağdaş Çankaya, whose most recent role was in Kuruluş: Osman
Emel Atıcı, known for a role in Bir Zamanlar Çukurova
The story of Melisa Aslı Pamuk illustrates the pain that so many have been in this week; desperately asking on Twitter if anyone could check on relatives who couldn’t be contacted. Thankfully, her story had a happy ending when the family members were located alive; many, many others were not so lucky.
To finish on a positive note, here is a picture of some rescuers with their sniffer dogs who help locate survivors in the rubble: