You're listening to shortwave from NPR.

Hey short waivers, Emily Cwang here.

So you may have heard about the 7.8 magnitude earthquake

that struck southeastern Turkey near the Syrian border

in the early hours of Monday morning.

It was felt hundreds of miles in all directions.

Aftershocks, leveled buildings that had already been damaged,

and a few hours later, there was a rare 7.5 magnitude aftershock

the death toll quickly climbed into the thousands.

To make sense of all of it, I'm here with Jeff Bromfield

and PR science correspondent.

And Jeff, you told me earlier that an earthquake of this size

had been expected in this region for a long time.

Yeah, Emily.

Several scientists I spoke to yesterday

said that this particular part of Turkey was overdue

for an earthquake, a large earthquake,

meaning it hadn't had a really big one for well over 100 years.

What makes this part of Turkey and Syria such an active earthquake zone?

Yeah, I mean, I think to zoom out for a minute,

we have to look at the big geological picture.

And that is basically a tectonic pileup

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