Istanbul still not Prepared for a Major Earthquake

On the 11th anniversary of the major earthquake on 17 August 1999, it is clear that the improvement and strengthening of buildings initiated after the quake have not been carried out as planned. Cemal Gökçe, Istanbul Branch President of the Chamber of Construction Engineers (IMO), warned that public buildings like schools and hospitals are under serious risk.

"Only 500 out of a total of 1,783 reviewed school buildings have been strengthened. 279 out of 322 hospital buildings were found not earthquake-proof. Only three of them took measures to reinforce the buildings".

"1 billion dollar per year would be enough"

According to Gökçe, the missing construction work for strengthening the buildings is not related to the cost involved:

"These works have not been postponed because of money matters. The political power should have planned it but it did not. The problems in Istanbul could have been brought down to a minimum with a strategic program spanning over 20 years allocating an annual allowance of $ 1 billion. Even the Metropolitan Municipality's budget amounts to $ 10 billion".

"New public housing is not supervised sufficiently"

Gökçe pointed out that the stability of buildings built after the earthquake should be taken into consideration as well. He emphasized that companies winning tenders for mass housing in particular are not being supervised sufficiently.

"I do not think that the new buildings are earthquake-proof because the supervision is highly insufficient.

"The insufficient control of the companies winning tenders cause the construction of illegal and unlicensed buildings which are one of the most important reasons for a high number of casualties in an earthquake".

"Less than 1 percent of existing housing has been strengthened"

According to Gökçe, the accurate number of housings belonging to the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality cannot be clearly determined. However, the head of IMO forwarded the following data:

"Not even 1 percent of the housing currently inhabited has been strengthened. These houses are in the same state as they were in 1999. The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality does not know the exact number of buildings in the city and no efforts are being made to work out an inventory. Some say there are 1.6 million buildings, other say there are 1.4 million. We are also concerned about this. All buildings should be registered. And we think that more than 1 million people will be made homeless, we have warned about this before".

"More than 70,000 buildings will be severely affected"

Gökçe explained what he expects to happen in the city in case of an earthquake with the strength of 7 on the Richter scale.

"20,000 people died in the earthquake that happened in 1999. We constantly warn that more than 70,000 buildings would be in a critical state in case the fault line passing close to Istanbul would crack". (BT/VK)