Turkey Earthquake Disaster
As I sit on the 11-hour overnight local bus to Istanbul, my mind is still deep in the magnitude of the disaster I have just witnessed in the Syria-Turkey border area. The destruction is beyond anything I have seen in my 20 years of disaster response work.
Yesterday, I navigated the rubble of Hatay, known as Antioch in ancient times. I could barely recognize the once-bustling city. The narrow streets filled with shops, restaurants, and apartments are gone. The tremors from the earthquake last week destroyed 90 percent of the city’s buildings, and the death toll is in the thousands.
Although the town is a couple of hundred kilometers from the ruptured fault line, it is situated on a soft riverbed that amplifies earthquake ground motions. Coupled with older building infrastructure, the result was death. Even many modern mid-rise reinforced concrete buildings were destroyed or tilted. The devastation reminded me of Hiroshima after the nuclear blast.
Our team spent a week assessing the damage and devising recovery strategies based on the Turkish government’s response and available international funding. We also assisted countless citizens in their broken homes. We estimated that 10,000 structures had collapsed, and an additional 20,000 buildings might need to be demolished due to extensive damage. On top of that, 100,000 buildings have sustained damages that rendered them uninhabitable. As a result, 2.7 million people were instantly homeless.
Turkey implemented earthquake-resistant design requirements in the late 1990s. Still, anything built before the 2000s, especially older concrete structures on soft soil, were death boxes, as we saw in Hatay. Retrofitting these structures would have made them more resilient, but it takes political will and public support. Unfortunately, such efforts usually only occur after a major disaster.
The most tragic fact is that Turkey’s construction industry has no enforced quality assurance. There is no licensing for contractors or engineers, allowing anyone to become either one. Additionally, there is no requirement for quality supervision of construction by engineers. While we inspected many collapsed modern structures, we found that many still collapsed. There were many critical elements that needed to be corrected. During earthquakes, small details matter. For example, smooth river pebbles were used as aggregate instead of small, rugged rocks, which are essential to binding the cement together. Critical tie reinforcement for columns lacked 135-degree hooks even though there were many in quantity. Engineers must be present to verify these small details. When back-to-back 7.8- and 7.5-magnitude earthquakes happen, more than 90% correct is needed. The result was collapse.
Contrary to media reports, the Turkish government’s response was decisive, quick, and effective over a widespread area. The affected zone is a 500-km-long by 200-km-wide mountainous area. Not an easy place to access. The Turkish FEMA equivalent, AFAD, spearheaded the effort, providing 150,000 warm tents in the first few days of the disaster and coordinating a 10,000-member international search and rescue team that saved hundreds of lives. All primary and secondary roads were opened by the end of the first week, and the damaged Hatay airport was opened simultaneously. They even started demolishing dangerously damaged buildings within a few days.
They are a determined people. They have a long way for recovery. But if any country can build back stronger and better on this scale, it will be Turkey.■