Earthquake: Before we become Pompeii...

Today is February 6.

Exactly three years have passed since the largest earthquake Turkey has ever experienced.

We had experienced earthquakes before.

However, the Maraş Earthquake we experienced on February 6, 2023, was very different from the others.

The earthquake, whose epicenter—that is, its source—was the Pazarcık district of Maraş, devastated the entire region as far as Hatay, 200 kilometers away.

11 provinces and 14 million of our people were affected by this disaster.

In a way previously unseen in world geological literature, two major ruptures occurred simultaneously.

In other words, one fault line broke twice.

Following the 7.8 magnitude earthquake centered in Pazarcık, a second rupture of 7.6 magnitude occurred in Elbistan.

Almost all of our old buildings and some of our new buildings were affected by this earthquake.

Ninety-five percent of the deaths were caused by the destruction of old buildings.

All buildings that had not received engineering services and were built by amateur, incompetent builders collapsed.

More than fifty thousand of our people lost their lives.

More than one million of our homes were either destroyed or rendered unusable.

We were forced to bury them with excavators.

It is also said that there are still bodies that have not been found.

While it is of course impossible to measure our spiritual loss, many say that our material loss is around 200 billion dollars.

We saw that the structural decisions we made after the 1999 İzmit earthquake did not work.

Building inspection companies were rendered ineffective under the pressure of amateur, incompetent builders.

Municipalities did not, or could not, resist these amateur builders.

The Earthquake Regulation, which was redesigned after 2002 and continuously improved over time, did not yield the desired result either.

After this great disaster, a change will be made to the Earthquake Regulation again, and the shear wall system will be made mandatory in buildings.

This system, which does not cost even one percent of the total building cost, will prevent new collapses.

In other words, thin, branch-like columns will now become a thing of the past, and buildings will be surrounded by reinforced concrete shear wall systems from top to bottom so that we can be more resilient against a new earthquake.

The cost of this process barely corresponds to one-thousandth of the money and time spent on the buildings destroyed after the earthquake.

Beyond the material aspect, it would be appropriate to say that disasters, which are also important in terms of national strategy, pose a threat to our independence.

There are examples of this in history.

The most well-known is Pompeii.

Pompeii was a great Roman city located in the Campania region of Italy, which was destroyed in 79 A.D. by being buried in volcanic ash as a result of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. It was revealed by scientists that Pompeii, which was excavated and brought to light in the 19th and 20th centuries, was destroyed after a disaster.

Let us come to our senses, introduce a certified engineer-contractor system, cast out the amateur, incompetent builders from the system, and let us not become Pompeii.