A magnitude 7.3 earthquake hit the city of Van in eastern Turkey Sunday afternoon. Turkey lies in a major seismic area where there are many fault zones. Nilgun Anadolu-Okur, associate professor of African American studies at Temple and a Turkish native, said that there had been some awareness on the part of officials there to replace some of the structures in vulnerable cities like Van: "In the city of van, old buildings were being renewed and new structures were rising. So maybe I'm hoping that many people lived in these newer buildings and there weren't many people living in the older buildings."