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November 2, 2020
ISTANBUL – Fatma Demirer, a lawyer in Izmir, was visiting a client in the prison when a strong earthquake struck the city on Friday afternoon of October 30. He had left his cell phone at the prison entrance, as required in Turkey, and when he retrieved it on his way out, he found dozens of messages from family and colleagues who were eagerly awaiting his response.
Demirer soon learned that his office building had collapsed and that his co-worker Sercan Turgut was inside.
“I immediately called Sercan,” Demirer told Al-Monitor. “He responded and said ‘Our office is completely destroyed. I’m on it, but I’m fine. Please rescue me. ”
When Demirer arrived at his office, he said that the nine-story building he was in had been reduced to two stories of rubble. The office was located in the Bayrakli district of Izmir, which was one of the areas that experienced the most damage during Friday’s earthquake.
Emergency crews rescued Sercan, who was slightly injured, from the rubble on Friday night, but others were not so lucky. Lawyers Murat Duman and his son Ozgur, who had been in his office on the building’s third floor, lost their lives when the structure collapsed. Demirer attended his funeral services on Monday, November 2.
“I am physically fine, but I am very sad for my colleagues,” said Demirer, who is a member of the Izmir branch of the Freedom Lawyers Association.
On Monday night, 91 people were reported to have lost their lives as a result of the earthquake and about 1,000 were injured, according to a statement from the state’s Emergency and Disaster Management Authority (AFAD).
Search and rescue work has been completed on 12 of the 17 collapsed buildings, with emergency crews working on five remaining structures. About 300 buildings suffered at least some structural damage in the event, according to Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay.
With rescue efforts continuing for the fourth day in Izmir, displaced residents are taking refuge with friends and family or in emergency camps that have been established by AFAD. Meanwhile, engineers wonder how to reduce structural damage in future disasters.
“The buildings in Izmir had not been tested by a major earthquake,” Eylem Ulutas Ayatar, Izmir president of the Turkish Union of Chambers of Engineers and Architects, told Al-Monitor. “However, we shouldn’t have experienced so much damage in this earthquake.”
He said that many experts are now debating the cause of the great damage observed in the Bayrakli district. Some engineers are questioning the quality of the soil in the area, but Ayatar said that the most important thing in an earthquake is the interaction between the soil and a building.
“The fact that one building stands tall when another collapses next to it during an earthquake shows that it is the building that kills, not the earthquake,” Ayatar told Al-Monitor.
Turkey, a country traversed by active faults, is prone to seismic activity. The United States Geological Survey rated the Izmir earthquake on Friday at a 7.0 on the Richter scale, making it one of the strongest to hit Turkey since a 1999 earthquake killed more than 18,000 people. in the northwest area of the country.
Despite the high risk of such events in the region, the rapid development of urban areas in Turkey, as a result of mass migration from the countryside to the city after 1950, has led to some poor quality construction that can easily collapse into case of a strong shaking.
After Friday’s earthquake, the Hurriyet newspaper published reports from local districts that found that two of the buildings that had been damaged had been constructed of “poor quality concrete.” The buildings were assessed as “at risk” in separate analyzes in 2012 and 2018, but reinforcement work was carried out on only one of the structures.
To reduce damage in future tremors, Ayatar said construction projects would need better monitoring regarding the materials used and the implementation of safe design standards. He said a national earthquake action plan was prepared in 2010 with the goal of taking an inventory of all public buildings and their structural integrity by 2017.
“It is 2020 and there is no inventory yet,” Ayatar told Al-Monitor.
He added: “Our country is focused on faults and earthquakes, but the information that people care about should be: ‘Will my building be damaged during an earthquake? It is safe?’ The answers to these questions will only come with a building inventory. “
Amid ongoing rescue efforts, some positive news emerged Monday when a 3-year-old girl, Elif Perincek, was found alive after being trapped in the rubble of her apartment for nearly 65 hours. On Sunday, a 70-year-old man, Ahmet Citim, was also rescued from the rubble.
The state’s emergency management authority has installed more than 3,500 tents for displaced people in Izmir and continues to provide disaster relief services. Turkey’s Environment and Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum said on Monday that state authorities had started building temporary housing for 1,000 people in Izmir’s Bayrakli district.
In a speech on Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that new houses would be built as soon as possible and that rental arrangements would be made for people displaced by the earthquake.
“We are determined to heal the wounds of our brothers and sisters in Izmir who were affected by the earthquake before the cold and rain began,” Erdogan said during an event in Samsun.
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