ELAZIG GUNISIGI NEWSPAPER – April 2012
ONE YEAR AGO…
On March 11, 2011, alarms were ringing for an earthquake in Japan. You may remember the television footage, where a supermarket employee was trying to hold up the items on a shelf instead of running away. However, this employee had no idea about the giant waves approaching them.
The massive waves caused by the tsunami almost destroyed Kesennuma. The sadness was not only felt in Japan but around the world.
The disaster that occurred last March took about 16,000 lives, left more than 6,000 injured, and more than 3,000 people went missing. Even now, despite ongoing searches, those whose bodies have not been found are considered lost, so it would be more accurate to say that the total death toll is around 19,000.
In Kesennuma, the 330-ton tanker in the middle of the city, rather than in the port, became a symbol of the earthquake.
If you search for photos of Kesennuma, you can find images from both last year and this year. The only difference between the two photos is that the piles of rubble and debris, which looked like a landfill, have been cleared.
However, there has been no significant progress in terms of rebuilding. This highlights the true scale of the disaster. In just one year, only the debris has been cleared.
After the tsunami, more than 125,000 buildings, including many public structures, were either destroyed or severely damaged.
World Bank experts estimated the financial loss from the disaster to be 235 billion dollars (420 billion Turkish lira). That’s equivalent to 420 quadrillion in our old currency.
This earthquake and tsunami are considered the most expensive natural disaster in world history.
Isn’t that the truth? It’s easy to inflict harm, but healing it is incredibly difficult. Healing requires effort, money, doctors, and most importantly, time.
Even if you mobilize all your resources, the wound doesn’t heal as quickly as it was inflicted. As time passes, the wound heals, but it still causes pain, and the scar remains.
What the Japanese, a nation so prepared for earthquakes, have gone through is truly a lesson (for those who are willing to learn). And then there are those who are unprepared—just imagine their situation. The judgment and appreciation are yours.
We may not fully grasp the danger posed by the inadequacy of our building stock in terms of earthquake resistance, but there is a tragicomic situation. That is, the exact quantity of our building stock is still unknown. This is also true for Elazığ.
To understand the scale of the risk or to decide where to start with urban transformation (in terms of structural renewal), it is essential to know the structural risk areas.
Therefore, the first thing that must be done is to determine the current building stock and risk map.
It is worth mentioning that there is no need to wait for our government to pass a law to create a structural risk map. There are no legal obstacles to this process.
For these studies to be conducted, the necessary technical teams exist in many institutions, academic infrastructure is available, and there is the equipment and operators required.
So what is stopping these studies from being carried out? That’s a question you need to investigate.