The August 17, 1999 Izmit (Turkey) earthquake (Mw=7.4) will be remembered as one of the largest earthquakes of recent times that affected a large urban environment (U.S. Geological Survey, 1999). This significant event was followed by many significant aftershocks and another main event (Mw=7.2) that occurred on November 12, 1999 near Duzce (Turkey). The shaking that caused the widespread damage and destruction was recorded by a handful of accelerographs (~30) in the earthquake area operated by different networks. The characteristics of these records show that the recorded peak accelerations, shown in Figure 1, even those from near field stations, are smaller than expected (Çelebi, 1999, 2000). Following this main event, several organizations from Turkey, Japan, France and the USA deployed temporary accelerographs and other aftershock recording hardware. Thus, the number of recording stations in the earthquake affected area was quadrupled (~130). As a result, as seen in Figure 2, smaller magnitude aftershocks yielded larger peak accelerations, indicating that because of the sparse networks, recording of larger motions during the main shock of August 17, 1999 were possibly missed.
