Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised speedy reconstruction of the Turkish cities destroyed by the earthquake disaster. An expert warns against building in the same place.
Munich – A week and a half after the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, survivors are still being found in the rubble of thousands of collapsed buildings. At the same time, many survivors are already wondering about the future, entire cities have been devastated. According to an expert, the towns and cities affected by the earthquakes should not be rebuilt on the same site, as they could be the scene of similar disasters again in the future.
Earthquake in Turkey: Expert on reconstruction – “More strong earthquakes will hit the region”
Prof. Dr. Marco Bohnhoff from the German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam vehemently advises against rebuilding the cities destroyed after the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. “Sooner or later, the region will be hit by other strong earthquakes,” said the earthquake physics expert recently German press agency. According to Bohnhoff, tremors are overdue both north-east and south of the current disaster region, and he has already predicted “an tremor with a magnitude of up to 7.4” for the metropolis of Istanbul.
He emphasized that earthquake-proof construction in particular was absolutely necessary in the preparation. Theoretically, this is also possible if you build near a fault. However, the costs for this are immense, and the construction times are correspondingly long.
Earthquake disaster in Turkey: President Erdogan promises reconstruction within a year
Above all, Bohnhoff uses the two cities of Antakya and Kahramanmaras, which were largely destroyed by the earthquake, as examples in Turkey. “Normally you would have to say that a city shouldn’t be rebuilt there,” says the GFZ expert, but people often don’t want to leave their area. As an example, he cites Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, which was badly damaged after an earthquake in 2010.
At the beginning of the severe catastrophe, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made a big promise to the people. He announced that he wanted to rebuild the regions affected by the earthquake within a year. However, the construction of the cities would have to be carried out with the costly and time-consuming earthquake-proof construction method in order to counteract further disasters.
Catastrophe in Turkey and Syria: “Decades of planning” needed for earthquake prevention
As disaster researcher Prof. Dr. Martin Voss already explained that not all construction companies comply with the applicable regulations, which means that since the earthquake tragedy in 1999, earthquake-proof construction has become mandatory in Turkey. “In order to preventively tackle an earthquake event of this magnitude, it takes decades of planning, design and implementation of the relevant specifications,” he said with regard to the devastating earthquakes in Turkey. It remains to be seen whether Turkish President Erdogan will take this into account in the election year. (ajr)
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