Around 5 mln buildings not quake resistant: Experts

ANKARA

Nearly 5 million buildings in the country can be evaluated as half-ruined and are not earthquake resistant,as the Marmara Region in which a large-scale quake is expected to occur will receive massive damage in that case, experts have warned during their presentation to the parliamentary earthquake investigation commission.

Earthquake experts noted that 24 provinces out of all 81 cities in the country and 110 districts are located on active fault lines, underlining that this number is not constant and there is a high possibility that new faults will form with each new tremor.

Approximately 5 million of the 21 million building stocks in the country are not earthquake-resistant and can be considered as “half-ruined,” they pointed out.

It was also stated that many of these half-ruined buildings were built between 1960 and 1990 before the construction standards and quake and zoning regulation were established.

Reminding that urban transformation should be carried out quickly for the whole country, experts also touched upon the expected large-scale earthquake in Istanbul.

Geologist Okan Tüysüz, one of the experts who informed the commission, stated that metropolitan Istanbul, where more than 16 million people reside, is the sixth city in the world that has the possibility of receiving severe destruction in an earthquake.

Stating that 7 percent of the city is built on stream beds that pose a serious danger for tremors, Tüysüz said, “The concepts of zoning and amnesty should not even come side by side.”

Another expert, Naci Görür, reminded that the Marmara Region is host to 60 percent of the country’s economic activities, drawing attention to the unpreparedness of the business world in Istanbul for an earthquake.

“If the earthquake we expect occurs in Istanbul and in the Marmara Region that is the center and lifeblood of economic activities in Türkiye, the wheels of the economy in Marmara will stop due to the lack of precautions due to this unpreparedness of the business world in Istanbul for an earthquake. The stopping of the wheels of the economy in Marmara means the whole county’s economic collapse,” Görür expressed.

Predicting that up to 100 million tons of rubble will emerge in Istanbul alone in a large magnitude earthquake, Görür said, “I think debris waste of this amount will mix with soil and water and come up to our table with a nutrient cycle.”

At the meeting where the experts shared their ideas on the contractor problem in the country, they stated that 78 percent of the contractors have no qualifications in construction.