Istanbul Municipality inspects buildings constructed before 2000

ISTANBUL

The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, which has been inspecting buildings constructed before the year 2000, has found out that one in five buildings in two of its earthquake-prone districts has the risk to collapse, according to Demirören News Agency.

“We inspected around 500 buildings in Silivri and Avcılar. Some 20 percent have great risks,” said Tayfun Kahraman, the head of the Earthquake Risk Management Department of the municipality.

Stating that the inspections commenced just after the magnitude 6.6 earthquake that jolted the western province of İzmir on Oct. 30, Kahraman informed that they would be inspecting around 790,000 houses in Istanbul intending to cover all 39 districts of Istanbul.

Seeing the two earthquake prone regions, Avcılar and Silivri, as priorities, Kahraman said: “We made controls in buildings that were constructed before the 1999 earthquake. Some buildings have great risks to collapse in an earthquake. Some can continue to stand with structural strengthening.”

“We do not share the information on buildings with the residents at the moment. We will inform them after all works are done,” he added.

Kahraman also noted that the expected Istanbul quake would be more powerful than the İzmir quake that killed 115 people.

“We are analyzing the city with our data. In some regions we have parcels to intervene, in some we have areas. When the inspections are finished we will warn our residents of the risks in their regions. We want to form a system that can help the residents financially or renovate the buildings they live in.”

According to Kahraman, “unfortunately, some property owners do not want their properties to be inspected as they can be announced risky.”

“Their house will be demolished if the inspectors give a report as so. That’s why, some owners do not want building controls,” Kahraman said.

Separately, the owners of some 2,000 properties in the risky Denizköşkler neighborhood in the Avcılar district made a protest on a 2008 decision that forbids constructions in the area.

“We want to demolish and rebuild our apartments and continue to live here. But due to the 2008 decision, we can’t have the construction permit to do so. For the last seven years, we are legally fighting to have the permission,” said a property owner talking in the name of others.