Dinar earthquake's effects on socio-economical activities and improving earthquake consciousness

vıı ABSTRACT Earthquakes are the parts of inner forces which have a great value on the life of human and the shape of the surface. With the result of earthquakes around the world and Turkey many people have died; great economical losses happened. One moderate earthquake took place in Dinar, the province of Afyon, south-west of Turkey, at 5.57 p.m. local time October 1. 1995. In this earthquake 90 people died and more than 200 injured and 4340 buildings heavily, 3712 moderately and 6104 slightly damaged. Epicenter of the earthquake is located on NW-SE trending Dinar-Çivril fault line, its mechanism is linked to the tensional stress field arising from the interaction between the subducting African plate and the overlaying Aegean plate in eastern Mediterranean. The Lakes Region of southwestern Turkey is located in the Alp-Mediterranean orogenic belt, which is a seismically most active part of the Alpine seismic belt Dinar earthquake has the seismotectonic features of the Lakes Region. Field studies showed that a rupture of 10-15 km long occured in the earthquake. This rupture constitutes a 10-15 km long segment of the NW-SE trending Dinar-Çivril fault of 55-60 km in length. There happened a very big deal of temporary migration after the earthquake. The population approaching forty-thousands decreased to fifteen-thousands. After disaster buildings had been built, most of the migrated turned back; however some working or retired or tradesmen who had a buildup did not prefer returning. Instead of that Dinar got migrations from the villages near and that's why it had a recession in social and economical cases. The native had difficulty to ' get used to new situations not only because of new social structure after the quake resulted migrations but also because of the changed streets, houses, neighbourhoods (appartment lives in disaster houses). Actually there was not a big loss in the aspect of economy, it only stopped for a while. That's why, it can not be said that the city was not economically affected by the earthquake.