Why was the last earthquake in Turkey so deadly?

James Julien Arion

Many factors made the powerful earthquake Turkiye and Syria so deadly. Certainly, it’s intensity and the constituent aftershock of 7.5 happened quickly. However, there are other important elements that must be pointed out…

 

Yiannis Papadopoulos

B.Sc. & MSc in Civil Engineering & Transportation Engineering, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Graduated 1995)

 

Why was the last earthquake in Turkey so deadly?

In order of importance:

1. It was very powerful! What people usually miss is that the Richter scale is logarithmic. In layman’s terms this means that a 7.8R earthquake is 10 times stronger than a 6.8R and 100 times stronger than a 5.8R.

2. It happened in the middle of the night, when almost all inhabitants were in their homes, sleeping.

3. A lot of the collapsed buildings were not designed based on modern building codes. Even more of them were not constructed based on modern antiseismic rules because certain criminals wanted to make more profit. Photos of missing rebars, of large/smooth riverbed rocks inside structural elements, even of foam (insulation) in columns and beams are horrifying. And they are horrifying because they are extreme examples. Who knows how many other things took place, like using low quality cement, using less rebar, using lower grade steel, not paying attention to the rebar joints. All the points above are critical in whether a building survives without a crack, with damages that can be repaired, with unrepairable damages but still standing allowing the residents to vacate, or whether it collapses in minutes killing everyone inside!

The Civil Engineers’ Chambers building is a good example (it would have been a perfect example if it was taller because, trust me, it would still stand perhaps with a bit more damage):

And because we only focus on buildings… here’s a highway:

Here’s what it should look like:

Source

In the photo there’s only the surface layer and the subgrade. Maybe there’s a small Subbase, but literally NO bas

Before you knock down the importance of that, when compared to the collapsed buildings, those highways and roads would have been used by the emergency crews to reach the disaster areas more quickly. They would also have alleviated traffic congestion from people rushing out of the affected areas.

4. It was followed by a 2nd major earthquake a few hours later.

5. It happened during a cold spell, in winter. That is very crucial for people who are injured because it is easy to die from hypothermia if you suffer trauma and blood loss.

6. This is the first occasion that I heard that there are amnesty laws in Turkey and they legalise potentially unsafe structures. This is a very serious issue and should be immediately reversed. Not just because it allows certain contractors to build unsafe buildings and then legalise them, but because it passes the message that contractors can build unsafe buildings and if someone accuses or checks them, they can legalise their crimes!