Saule Kusainova has been thinking the unthinkable since her home city, Almaty, was struck by an unusually strong earthquake in January.

And she is not alone.

Many in Kazakhstan’s largest city, much loved for its green spaces and scenic proximity to the Tien-Shan mountains, are wondering if the time has come for them to up sticks and move. Some are even thinking of relocating to the unglamorous capital, Astana, where temperatures in winter sometimes plunge to minus-40 degrees Celsius.

“Since [the earthquake], the anxiety has not left me. I am not so much afraid for myself, but for the children,” Kusainova told Eurasianet. “We will no longer be able to live here as serenely as before.”

When the magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit in the early hours of January 23, Kusainova rushed out of her sixth-floor apartment with her daughter and two grandchildren. She is now going through the motions of selling that apartment to raise money to buy a lower-slung home in the suburbs.

Despite the fact that there were no fatalities, there has been a general spike in anxiety. Almaty-based online counseling service Harmonia.kz told Eurasianet that since the earthquake, demand for its services has risen by one-third. People pursuing therapy typically cite their fear of death as the reason for seeking help.

“People have been in constant fear, in anticipation of a devastating earthquake. They do not get enough sleep, and they experience panic attacks,” psychologist Olesya Fedorovich told Eurasianet. “Many people regularly experience phantom sensations. It seems to them that an earthquake has begun, even when it is not the case.”

It does not help that notable follow-up tremors have occurred since January. A magnitude 5 tremblor around Almaty on the morning of March 4 once more sent large numbers of apartment-dwellers fleeing to the relative safety of the streets.

Well-meaning officials want the public to be informed, but their briefings to the press are just adding to the dread.

“Almaty is one of the earthquake-prone regions of our republic. The city is located on 27 tectonic plate faults,” Emergency Situations Deputy Minister Ibragim Kulshimbayev said at a press conference in February.

Almaty residents should not fret, though, he suggested. It is quite unlikely, as some have claimed, that 60 percent of buildings in the city would be destroyed if a magnitude 9 quake were to strike, Kulshimbayev said. The number is closer to 30 percent, he said in an attempt at reassurance.

Real estate market data appears to validate claims that quake anxiety is a real thing. Local media have reported on a recent surge in demand for private homes, which is to say detached houses, instead of apartments. Real estate listing sites indicate that sellers have hiked their asking prices accordingly.

In an interview with Eurasianet, Nurgali Amankulov, an analyst at Almaty real estate agency Favorit, confirmed this market trend, although he believes it is a blip.

“After some time, everything will return to normal,” he forecast.

Almaty is hardly a stranger to earthquakes. A pair of particularly disastrous quakes — in 1887 and 1911 — claimed hundreds of lives apiece and carved fears of a repeat occurrence into the collective consciousness.

The considerable time span since those dates contributes to people's nervousness. Seismologists have been given to opining that powerful earthquakes in the region occur on a 100- to 150-year cycle, which would be troubling if accurate.

The earthquake on the border of Syria and Turkey in February 2023, which claimed thousands of lives, awakened another strain of concern, over whether construction companies and corrupt officials may have conspired to enable the proliferation of high-rises incapable of withstanding major tremors.

Developers take comfort in the fact that the earthquakes in January and earlier this month caused negligible damage. Major construction firms like BI Group and BAZIS-A hastened to assure Kazakhs that their buildings are erected with the use of monolithic reinforced concrete technology and are designed to withstand magnitude 9 shocks. If social media commentary is anything to go by, though, such claims are commonly treated with sniffy disbelief.

There is unhappiness too about how city authorities dealt with the January quake. An  early warning system built at a cost of 1.1 billion tenge (about $2.5 million) failed to work properly. To make matters worse, it emerged that the company behind its installation was controlled by Nurali Aliyev, the grandson of the increasingly out-of-favor former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

After a round of scapegoat-hunting, Bauyrzhan Syzdykov, another Emergency Situations Deputy Minister, informed reporters last month that an internal investigation had found that his department’s Almaty branch was found to be negligent in its duties and that a number of officials had been punished. Syzdykov did not specify what kind of punishment had been administered.

This may be the moment for seismologists to get officials to heed their warnings.

Alla Sadykova, a leading expert at Almaty’s Institute of Seismology, has complained in the past that the authorities have failed to provide resources for the required number of seismic observation stations.

Speaking to Eurasianet in 2021, Sadykova complained that her institute did not receive a reliable stream of government funding. Instead, they are forced to apply for grants, which often fall short of requirements and are insufficient to cover salaries, she said.

“Seismic safety is clearly not a priority in Kazakhstan,” Sadykova said at the time.