The following are editorial opinions from newspapers from around the world which may be of interest to Royal Gazette readers.

Hurriyet Daily, Turkey,

on earthquake preparedness

The still unfolding tragedy from the earthquake in Haiti, with the death toll at 230,000, has captured the world's attention to the growing dangers of seismic safety. Turkey has done its part, in terms of both rescue efforts and aid. ...

The horror in Haiti has also once again refocused attention on earthquake dangers closer to home. Memories of the 1999 Marmara earthquake that killed 20,000 on the outskirts of Istanbul are the most vivid.

But it also important to keep in the public mind the fact that all of Turkey is at risk. The most devastating earthquake to hit what is today Turkey struck in 526 A.D. in southern Antakya.

Historical accounts place the death toll at a quarter of a million. A more recent disaster was the 1939 Erzincan earthquake that killed 33,000. Three years later, in 1942, an earthquake in Tokat killed 3,000. The following year, another quake in Samsun killed 4,000. ...

Adding these numbers up is a mind-numbing exercise. ... While the human suffering overshadows economic loss, this is a dimension not to be neglected. Just the loss of productivity from the 1999 Marmara earthquake alone has been estimated at $2 billion.

The good news in the face of this is that huge strides in engineering and seismic safety can offer greater protection against the aftermath of earthquakes than ever before.

The bad news is that in a fast-urbanising world, the concentration of vulnerability is actually growing. And this latter trend applies to much of Turkey.

So the government's new plan to designate "earthquake buffers" throughout quake-prone regions ... can only be welcome. We fear, however, that it is too little and may prove too late.

As several geologists note, this ignores both the danger of deep faults and the reality that building demolition in dangerous areas never gets far.

Yes, there is much real and present danger in Turkey to distract the public mind from threats that are abstract and, one hopes, far away. But this cannot excuse a lack of urgency in preparedness that defines the current state of readiness.

This is the real seismic danger to Turkey.