'No longer safe': Fear of 'Big One' grips Turkey after deadly quake
Turkey Earthquake: Turkey's cultural and economic capital is home to up to 20 million people, many still haunted by memories of the last "Big One" that struck just east of the city in 1999.
The helmet-topped engineer drove his pointy instrument into the concrete to test whether Durmus Uygun's building will crumble when the feared big quake finally strikes Istanbul.
"I'm pretty confident but my children aren't convinced, so we're having this test done," said Uygun, who lives in one of the Turkish megalopolis's poorer and more densely packed neighbourhoods.
"If the result is good, we will live in peace. But who knows where we will be when the earthquake hits? We may be at the supermarket or at work -- that's what scares us."
In his fifties and wearing a black beret, Uygun is far from the only one living in fear in Istanbul.
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Turkey's cultural and economic capital is home to up to 20 million people, many still haunted by memories of the last "Big One" that struck just east of the city in 1999. More than 17,000 people died, including 1,000 in Istanbul.
The city has grown substantially since then, becoming a magnet for people attracted by its booming economy -- and oblivious to the active fault line running along its southern edge.
That changed on February 6, when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake killed more than 48,000 in southeastern Turkey and nearly 6,000 over the border in Syria, leaving entire cities in ruins.
A state of collective psychosis has since gripped Istanbulites, who have requested more than 140,000 checks of the type being conducted on Uygun's apartment building.
