ELAZIG GUNISIGI NEWSPAPER – June 2011
THE THINGS TALKED ABOUT IN THE DISTANCE
The issue that elections have made us forget, urban transformations that remain nothing more than election slogans, and even when mentioned, whose contents are never disclosed and no one ever bothers to ask about them, is of course the earthquake hazard. I would like to express that sometimes I experience serious pessimism regarding this matter. The issue of structural safety, which we only address temporarily when earthquakes occur, is actually a serious internal threat for our country.
The saying “Earthquakes don’t kill, buildings do” could be the first sentence in finding a solution. We are turning a natural event into a disaster. The stock of buildings with insufficient earthquake resistance increases every day. In the face of this increase, is it enough to just pass laws and regulations concerning buildings? It is not possible to solve the issue solely with reinforced concrete rules. The core of the problem lies in the insufficient earthquake-resistant building stock. However, we also need to examine how this building stock has emerged in the provinces. The social aspect, such as migration and slums, should be carefully analyzed.
Between May 30 and June 3, 2011, the National Earthquake Engineering Conference was held at Istanbul Technical University in cooperation with the Turkey Earthquake Foundation’s Earthquake Engineering Committee and the Chamber of Civil Engineers. This conference, which saw presentations from academics, civil engineers, and foreign experts who have worked for years on earthquake and building safety in our country, focused more on the agenda of the insufficient earthquake-resistant building stock in Turkey and the necessary actions to address it rather than technical research topics.
The overwhelming concern at the conference was that the authorities still did not fully understand the scale of the danger. The biggest proof of this misunderstanding was the significant deficiencies in building inspections, the lack of any initiatives for existing building stocks, and the increasing attractiveness of metropolises instead of facilitating the return from cities to rural areas.
The problems that would arise after earthquakes seemed endless. One, perhaps the most tragic aspect of the problem, was the question of where to dispose of the building rubble if a highly destructive earthquake occurs in Istanbul. Imagine people facing life-threatening situations, the country’s economy facing significant threats, difficulties in health, food, and legal fields, and on top of that, you can’t even find a place to store the rubble you’ve cleared. If we truly took earthquakes and the earthquake hazard in our country seriously, we wouldn’t be so relaxed.
At the conference, Turkey's building problems in the face of earthquakes were summarized under two main headings: the insufficient earthquake-resistant existing building stock and the newly constructed buildings with incomplete inspections and unknown earthquake resistance.
For Elazığ, as well as for other cities, the first step is to identify the earthquake-resistant building stock in high-risk areas for earthquakes. The scale of the danger is still only a prediction. After this identification is made, these buildings should be reinforced or rebuilt with the help of a national strategy. This is not something that can be accomplished in a few days, but planning must be done, and the work must be urgently started. Meanwhile, the design and construction inspections of new buildings should be flawlessly implemented. Until last year, building inspections were only applied in pilot provinces. This shows that the stock of buildings with insufficient earthquake resistance has been increasing and continues to increase.
The problems caused by earthquakes are the same in every province of Turkey. As long as the effect of earthquakes is ignored, as seen in the 1992 Erzincan, 1999 Marmara, 2003 Bingöl, and other destructive earthquakes, our country will suffer immense material and moral losses. This threat, which negatively affects our country’s future, needs to be eliminated as soon as possible. Even a country like Japan, which is well-prepared for earthquakes, still has not recovered from its wounds. It is not hard to imagine how our situation would be.
Until a national earthquake strategy is developed in our country, my final word will always be the same: “In societies with a high level of civilization, who set their sights on the future with goals and grand projects, the safest places during an earthquake are their own homes.”