7.8 Earthquake hits southern Turkey, Syria and Lebanon

It's an awful tragedy. Natural disasters are something we can't control, unfortunately.
Just saw satellite photos of the damage, and it's awful.
I don't have any friends in that countries, but I feel extremely sorry for those who were killed or injured

 

It's incredibly tragic. So many innocent lives lost, families destroyed, and countless orphans. Apparently this area was taking in many refugees from other conflicts (Syrian/Iraq) so it's even more heartbreaking the struggles these people have had to endure and continue to endure. Makes you appreciate the good things we have been blessed with in life. Could go away in an instant.

I'm glad the world is showing support for Turkey and I hope that we do the same for Syria, even with Assad in charge. This will be a global undertaking due to the massive scale of the destruction.

 

That's true to a point, but the Turkish government knew this could be a problem and allowed unregulated construction which led to a lot of preventable deaths

 

Yep, socal, norcal, and the pnw in particular could get very ugly when a big one hits.

 

"There"
Though i feel you knew this.

 

Devastating loss of life. Hope they're able to rescue as many as possible.

 

This is sad and very tragic.

This is also what Russia is doing to Ukraine but with bombs and missles.

 

It's actually much worse than that. Turkey has been collecting an "earthquake tax" since 1999 to use on making sure that buildings are built to the earthquake codes. The money went into the general treasury and was spent on all kinds of things (roads, etc.) without the Turkish people knowing. Additionally, Erdogan had a "zoning amnesty" where buildings that were not built according to code would be allowed to stand and be sold just the same as buildings that were built to code. There is going to be some hostility over this.

Questions grow over construction standards following Turkey earthquake

Over 13 million buildings were declared legal by this procedure.

 

That's ugly

 

INDEED - I have been watching some European TV about the disaster.

Obviously the disaster takes precedence but calls for HOW it could have been so devastating are coming out, with the inquiry immediately focusing on corrupt (not adhering to code) construction practices, may be a principle cause.

Then a former head of European Relief efforts is stating that if buildings had been built to code, that the buildings WOULD be able to withstand a 7.8.

The counter argument is that new building codes designed to withstand stronger earthquakes was not implemented until after the 1999 quake.

Of course the counter to THAT, is that most / many of the buildings collapsing were pre 1999.

When an estimated 20,000+ die and another 80,000 are injured one would like to think a society would pay attention to building codes in one of the most earthquake prone regions of the world.

But, we all may expect after a couple of years, when things settle down, the corrupt Gov't and Contractors will resort to business as usual with payoffs to turn the eyes away from future construction contracts.

I wonder if anyone has trouble sleeping at night knowing that the load of re-bar that was not installed, that was put into ones pocket, leading to a building collapsing, killed old folks, young folks and women and children? ............NAH PROBABLY NOT.

 

Be interesting to see if this hits Erdogan in the upcoming election. I’m guessing not.

 

An interesting article about what a lot of California buildings have in common with Turkish buildings: non-ductile concrete.

A deadly building flaw common in California brings destruction and misery to Turkey, Syria

 

I think California should put a plaque on the outside of buildings indicating in some way how well the building is built to resist earthquakes. Whether the building is rated on a scale of 1-10, or has detailed info on the design features with a one-word rating of "poor", "below average", up to "excellent", probably doesn't matter. The value of a poorly-constructed building would suffer (although the value of the land would not), and that would encourage the owner to either retrofit the building or tear it down and rebuild. The only difficulty with this idea is that, as new ways to construct buildings are developed, all of the buildings would have to be periodically re-evaluated to the new standards and re-labeled (maybe every 20-25 years).

 

One nice story from the earthquake in Turkey: a 10-day-old newborn was pulled alive from the rubble after four days, along with the mother. That's got to mess him up: "I've only been out six days, and all of a sudden I'm trapped again! This is driving me to drink!"

Newborn, toddlers survive days in rubble, bringing joy amid earthquake tragedy