The Turkish word “Debren” carries a particular horror for that country’s citizens. It means “Earthquake.” When quakes strike Turkey, they are far too often catastrophic events for the people who find themselves at or close to the epicenter. What is shocking is that there is clear evidence that it does not have to be this way.
Japan is a country no less prone to seismic activity. But with the terrible exception of the massive Hyogo quake which struck the city of Kobe and killed 6,430 people, the majority of these natural convulsions rarely leave such a horrendous trail of death and damage.
In Turkey they do. Back in the summer of 1999 an earthquake measuring 7.4 on the Richter scale rocked the cities of Izmit and Istanbul, leaving more than 17,000 dead and many more injured. The shock felt by the Turks was shared by the world community, not least because the root cause of the tragic loss of life quickly became abundantly clear. It was greed.
Countless buildings erected by disreputable construction companies simply did not conform to the basic safety regulations for structures designed to stand in earthquake-prone areas. Some politicians had long been arguing that Turkey’s regulations were not sufficiently stringent. This, however, did not matter. It quickly became evident in the enquiry following the 1999 quake that planning officials who were charged with enforcing the building codes either failed to discharge their duties or accepted bribes to turn a blind eye to flagrant violations.
Thus whole blocks of flats collapsed like cards. Matters were made worse because it is a frequent trick in Turkey to add extra floors to projects, thus wringing the last ounce of profit out of an already cheap and shoddy enterprise. Beyond this, poor Turkish families had built their “Gecikondular” — houses built in a single night — and later expanded them upward, with little thought for the structural safety of the buildings. The result was a massive tragedy.
The extent of the carnage caused by the laxity of builders and the planning authorities was so horrendous that the then Turkish government promised that at last something was going to be done to enforce the rules.
Four years on, and when a moderate quake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale strikes near the eastern Turkish city of Bingol, a modern multistory school dormitory collapses on the sleeping children. As many as 90 of them have died. Some officials in Ankara are already pointing out that the building was constructed about a year before the disastrous Izmit quake. This is simply not good enough.
If the Turkish authorities had really been serious about tightening the rules, they would have included in their campaign inspections of structures already erected. A modern government would have prioritized these investigations, starting with schools and hospitals which contained the most vulnerable of their citizens. However, even if such a program was ever initiated, it seems clear that it did not filter down to the local level.
There is a name for constructors who think they can get away with substandard buildings, and for officials who are too lazy or too corrupt to stop them. That name is “murderer.”
