Earthquake: Why Did Thousands Of Buildings In Turkey Collapse?

Following Monday’s deadly earthquake, thousands of people are reportedly still believed to be buried beneath the debris of collapsed buildings in southeast Turkey. According to the authorities, at least 6,444 buildings were destroyed in 10 provinces by two significant earthquakes and numerous aftershocks, killing more than 12,800 people as of Thursday afternoon.

The country is now attempting to understand why this natural disaster, for which Turkey had been preparing for more than 20 years, took such a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure. Rescue workers are still searching through the rubble in search of a miracle.

Was it because the two earthquakes, the first with a magnitude of 7.8 and the second with a magnitude of 7.6, were so powerful that few buildings survived? Or that they didn’t adhere to contemporary building standards? Was there any lapse in the authorities’ standards of conduct?

Professor Okan Tuysuz, a geological engineer from Istanbul Technical University, claims that a catastrophic confluence of all of the aforementioned factors resulted in Monday’s disaster.

Tuysuz told Al Jazeera, “We’re dealing with a fairly significant earthquake here. “The energy unleashed by the explosion of around 5 million tonnes of TNT was roughly equivalent to the first one. The second one was 3.5 million tonnes in weight. Most structures would find it difficult to endure such force.

The Earthquake Retrofit Association of Turkey’s president, Sinan Turkkan, a civil engineer, concurred.

Engineer Sinan Turkkan, president of the Turkish Earthquake Retrofit Association, concurred. He explained that the tremors “struck in fast succession and were not only very forceful.” Not only were the earthquakes extremely powerful, but they also hit in quick succession.

“Many buildings suffered only light to moderate damage in the first quake but collapsed after the second.”

Although experts stressed that a catastrophe of this magnitude is by no means inevitable, back-to-back shocks of this magnitude can endanger any building.

According to official estimates, Monday saw the fall of 6,000–7,000 buildings. No matter how strong the earthquake was, according to Turkan, if all the structures were up to code, the damage would not have been as severe.

During a visit to the disaster area on Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan justified his country’s preparation for and response to the earthquake, asserting that it was “impossible for anyone to prepare for the size of the calamity.”

Then he declared that all of the collapsed structures in the quake’s ten afflicted provinces would be rebuilt by the state within a year.

“We will rebuild here, just like we did in Malatya, Elazig, Bingol, and Van. This is a business we are quite familiar with. Our government has previously demonstrated its capacity to rebuild. In Hatay, Maras, and the other eight impacted provinces, we will follow suit.

When a magnitude 7.6 earthquake rocked the western Marmara region in 1999, killing 17,500 people, the majority of the buildings that collapsed on Monday were already in place. To get Turkey ready for the next big earthquake, the government has since made considerable changes to the Turkish Seismic Design Code and in 2008 started a massive urban makeover project.