They were told their building was earthquake safe. It collapsed anyway.
The upscale 3-year- old housing complex of Asur in the Turkish city of Malatya, repletewith chandeliers and marble floors, promised to be earthquake- safe, built with the best materials to modern seismic codes. Residents in the middle- class neighborhood paid more for those assurances.
One of the compound’s two buildings collapsed in the early hours of Feb. 6, concrete and steel tumbling to the ground in a cloud of dust when a strong aftershock hit the region hours after a 7.8magnitude earthquake.
It is a pattern that has emerged elsewhere in the earthquake zone: Some structures built to new, strict seismic standards were flattened while others nearby still stood, including older ones that came before the updated rules.
“We didn’t choose our apartment because of the marble bathrooms and beautiful light fixtures,” said Mine Goze, 42, who lives in Block A of the compound with her husband and two children. “We knewwewere moving to a high-risk earthquake zone and wanted to be in a safe building, even if it meant paying double the rate of rent in the area.”
Goze’s husband, who had gone back to their apartment to assess the damage and rescue their cat, managed to get out just before the building collapsed. Most of the residents had already evacuated after the first earthquake.
“It was a close call; many people could have died,” Goze said. “We demand answers. Why did our building collapse while the other building in our compound remained intact?”
The earthquake and aftershocks, killing more than 35,000 people in Turkey and Syria according to The Associated Press, were strong enough to destroy even buildings that adhered to the codes. But the scope of the devastation, and inconsistent damage to newer buildings, has focused increased scrutiny on the country’s construction regulations and developers’ compliance with the codes
aimed at making buildings earthquake safe.
A video of the Asur collapse, analyzed by three engineers with extensive knowledge of buildings and engineering practices in Turkey, found that it was most likely the result of poor structural design. The engineers, who independently assessed the video, all pointed to a flaw known as a weak story.
Each story of a building should have enough lateral strength and stiffness to transfer the load during an earthquake all the way to the ground, said one of the engineers, Mustafa Mahamid, a researcher at Technion-israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel, and a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers. When it doesn’t, he said, theweak story can fail, bringing the building down with it.
“The concrete started collapsing on the ground floor,” said Mahamid, who has lived and studied in Turkey.
Ihsan Celik, the developer of the residential block that collapsed in the Asur compound, said that the construction of the building was carried out in compliance with the latest regulations, using the highest quality of concrete reinforced with steel bars. He acknowledged that an engineering error may have occurred, causing the collapse of the bottomfloor, but said he could not comment further with an ongoing investigation.
“We are still investigating what happened and cannot be sure, but this was a very strong earthquake causing several other new buildings to collapse in the area,
and people died,” Celik said. “Thankfully no one died in our building, and we have more than 70 other buildings in the area that are undamaged.”
Across the country, anger is mounting over the lives lost and the millions now without homes and businesses. Turkish authorities have detained or arrested more than 10 contractors accused of violating building regulations. Several developers were caught trying to flee the country as the Ministry of Justice ordered local officials to set up special units to investigate “earthquake crimes.”
Celik and his company, Ishak Insaat, have not been implicated in these detentions.
“We draft the laws well, but we do not implement them. This is our biggest problem,” said Pelin Pinar Giritlioglu, president of the Istanbul branch of the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects.
In 1999, Turkeywas hit by a devastating earthquake in the northwestern city of Izmit that killed more than 17,000 people and damaged around 20,000 buildings. Since then, new regulations have been introduced and updated to ensure that structures in fault zones are built to absorb the impact of earthquakes.
But lax enforcement and poor construction practices persist, dogged by concerns about subpar materials and weak inspection protocols. The problems have been exacerbated by a governmentbacked building boom in recent years that has reshaped city skylines with large residential building projects that are often delivered hastily, without adequate quality control.
The Asur complex is one of many new residential projects built in Malatya, part of the construction frenzy that spurred economic growth across the country. It marketed itself as a “first- class quality” compound, complete with a soccer field and basketball court, attracting families of doctors, police officers and teachers.
Whether the Asur building was drawn up and constructed with potential shortcomings— or whether later modifications weakened it — was not immediately clear. Even for developers committed to following the latest seismic codes, designing a high-rise structure to withstand the lateral forces, shaking and swaying in an earthquake is no simple task.
The three engineers who analyzed the video of the Asur collapse said there appeared to be a design flaw in the ground floor. As the earth shook during the large aftershock, most of the building showed no initial damage, at least as viewed from the outside. Then within seconds dust began spewing from the ground floor — probably pulverized concrete from overwhelmed vertical columns that were beginning to buckle.