On 6 February 2023, an earthquake of Magnitude 7.8 struck southern and central Turkey and western Syria. Two major aftershocks of 6.7 and 7.5 Magnitude soon followed. Thousands of people have lost their lives and the death toll seems to be increasing rapidly. Although the earthquake occurred in a highly seismically vulnerable region, the footages from the disaster-stricken area show a high number of building collapses.
What could be the reason for such building collapses (based on preliminary information)?
Can it be attributed to flaws in building design? or problems in design implementation? or lack of routine maintenance? or a higher degree of ground acceleration than anticipated? or any other reasons?
Some possible general explanations can be found at:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/evangelia-garini-geocvemp7913_preliminary-report-on-the-2023-eqs-of-turkey-syria-activity-7031716623459729408-EQPg/
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/2/9/why-did-so-many-buildings-collapse-in-turkey
https://nehandaradio.com/2023/02/09/turkey-earthquake-why-did-so-many-buildings-collapse/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/turkey-earthquake-damage-many-buildings-collapsed-like-pancakes/
https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-the-earthquake-in-turkey-was-so-damaging-and-deadly/
Rana Roy
The following sites can be useful:
https://deprem.afad.gov.tr/home-page
https://www.usgs.gov/
it is a fact that the area where the earthquake has taken place that is south east turkey and the Syria border is a earth proven area so it is inevitable for earth quakes to take place in such areas so rather than going deep in geographical parameters when you see the aerial survey of the areas where the earth quake has taken place you can see that most of the buildings which have collapsed are the high rise buildings where the buildings up to 5 floors are standing still. so rather than considering other geographical and design factors isn't it we humans who should understand that we should not build high-rise structures in earthquake proven areas. atleast this is what i feel i may be wrong.
Shaik Chandini
There could be multiple reasons. However, I can not fully agree that building a high-rise structure was the problem. The earthquakes according to their time period of motion can cause severe effects on small, mid-rise, or high-rise structures. The data coming out of Turkey show that the time period of the earthquake sequence was such that mid to high-rise became more vulnerable. In addition, there could be problems in design and construction itself. If high-rise structures are not designed and built properly then they can serve as a death trap. So, broadly speaking the building damages can be attributed to the severity of the earthquake, its time period, and inadequate design and construction.
yes indeed there will be problem relating to design of structures but the fact that the place is a earth quake proven area and recently a 6.1 scale of earth quake has also been occured like this many more earth quakes have been taken place in earth quake proven areas then it is we humans who need to understand that structures no matter how good you build it will not be able to stand the natural disaster as the disaster can be of any level so we should atleast make sure that rather than giving importance to high rise structures why not we build safe low rise structures so that when a strucutre is failed atleast we can save human lives. Japan give more importance to low rise and wooden inhabited strucutres in high earth quake risk areas they have given importance to human life on the technology we should learn from them and shpuld atleast give encouragement o such strucutres where we can atleast save the human life. Bbble deck slab is also one of such strucutres where the dead load of slab is reduced.
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