Two days after the devastating earthquake hit, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited one of the hardest-hit areas and declared that it was “impossible to prepare for such a disaster”. Did.
Indeed, the scale of the destruction was unexpected. The death toll from his February 6, 2023 earthquake that hit Turkey and northern Syria continues to rise. But a week later he recorded over 35,000 dead, over 50,000 wounded, and over a million people receiving aid to survive in the bitter cold. The 7.7-magnitude quake struck while many were asleep in the town of Pazarjuk in Kahramanmaras in southern Turkey, the epicenter of the quake. Nine hours after that, a large aftershock followed in the town of Elbistan, about 50 miles from the initial quake, completely collapsing buildings weakened by the initial impact.
The final death toll may place these two back-to-back quakes among the worst natural disasters witnessed in the world.
A compelling question for us as disaster mitigation scholars is whether we could have avoided the loss of this enormous number of lives, homes and livelihoods. There is no way to prevent earthquakes from occurring, but what can be prevented, or at least contained, is the scale of the disaster caused by these unavoidable tremors.
In our view, the proposal that the country is “unprepared” for the magnitude earthquake that hit Turkey and northern Syria is a political statement. So it reflects a political choice made, not science. In Turkey, the lack of preparedness contrasts with the known seismic risk situation facing the country.
missed a chance
According to the revised and published Turkey Seismic Hazard Map in 2018, almost all of Turkey is at risk of earthquakes, with two important fault lines (Eastern Anatolian Fault Zone and Northern Anatolian Fault Zone) dividing the country. It is vertical.
The 870-mile (1,400-kilometer) long North Anatolian Fault runs from east to west across the northern half of the country, threatening the country’s capital, Ankara, and the major cities of Istanbul, as well as the country’s most industrialized regions. increase. About 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) long, the East Anatolian Fault runs diagonally across the southeastern part of the country. Although it covers small urban and village areas, millions of people are at risk in these areas.
Turkey has repeatedly tried to address this basic seismic risk. In 1959, the Turkish parliament passed Disaster Law 7269, establishing a plan to establish disaster control regulations at the national, provincial and municipal levels. The law raised some awareness, but in the 1990s he was hit by five major earthquakes, dashing hopes that existing measures would be sufficient to protect the growing population from death and destruction.
After a devastating 1999 earthquake that killed more than 17,000 people in the Marmara region of northwestern Turkey, the Turkish government strengthened building codes and launched a recovery and reconstruction program aimed at improving coordination among jurisdictions. has launched its main program. However, this ambitious program was hampered by chronic corruption and poor enforcement of building codes.
The Turkish government also imposed an “earthquake tax” after the 1999 disaster to raise funds to better prepare the country for future earthquakes. billion dollars were collected through levies. But there are serious questions about how that money was spent.
