This is an article about the devastating earthquake that hit Turkey on February 6, 2023, causing the collapse of numerous buildings and causing many casualties. The quake, which had a magnitude of 7.3, struck an area near the border between Turkey and Syria. The earthquake was so strong that it caused The pancakes of many buildings in the affected area collapsed, including soft-floor structures that could not withstand the shaking.
The quake was not the first in an area close to two major fault lines. Turkey has experienced many earthquakes over the past century, with the latest one among the deadliest in the region. This is partly due to the fact that many Syrian refugees live in Populated areas are populated by haphazardly constructed and largely neglected buildings. Additionally, the Syrian civil war has weakened many buildings in the area.
The Devastating Impact of Soft-Story Structures during Earthquakes
What made the quake even more devastating, however, was that Turkey knew the most dangerous buildings. These are soft-floor structures, usually multi-layered, large structures with an open bottom. The ground floor can be a car park or Room for a small business or additional family. These structures are common all over the world, especially in countries like India, Pakistan and Turkey. While they offer a solution to overcrowding in densely populated areas, they have historically done a poor job of withstanding moderate to strong capacity earthquake.
The reason for this is that the columns of soft-story buildings are usually made of wood, while the top floor may be made of a heavier material such as concrete. Sometimes the ground floor has fewer walls than the walls above, the sides may be open, or the columns are not connected wall. This means that the soft floor is the weakest floor and cannot fully support the heavier floor above. When an earthquake occurs, the structure may shake until the ground floor collapses. In a powerful earthquake like the one that hit Turkey and Syria, the rest of the building could follow Trapping people under heavy construction material makes rescue missions more difficult.
Soft-Story Buildings in Turkey: A History of Neglect and the Challenge of Retrofitting for Earthquake Safety
This is not the first time Turkey has encountered such a problem. In 1999, Izmit was hit by a magnitude 7.6 earthquake, killing more than 17,000 people. Poor architectural design and soft floors, which accounted for nearly 90 percent of buildings that collapsed, contributed to the death toll in the disaster. Aftermath of the Izmit Earthquake Push the Turkish government to reintroduce building codes emphasizing earthquake safety. However, due to corruption, these regulations are not enforced, and many buildings in Turkey were too well built before 1999, which means that these buildings can only be retroactively strengthened.
There’s a way to keep soft-story buildings intact in the event of an earthquake: retrofit them with materials that can support the weight of the structure. Ideally, these wooden columns could be replaced or reinforced with steel framing. Open walls can also be reinforced and additional Bolts and brackets can be drilled into the foundation. This will ensure that the ground floor is supported if the structure wobbles. However, this is a costly endeavor, and nearly impossible even in a country like the United States.
According to the World Bank, about 6.7 million residential buildings in Turkey need renovation or reconstruction at a cost of US$465 billion. Only about 4 percent of these buildings will be retrofitted by 2021. This means that many buildings in Turkey are still at risk and require urgent Take action to prevent this tragedy from happening again.
In conclusion, the earthquake that struck Turkey on February 6, 2023 was a devastating reminder of the country’s urgent need for seismic safety measures. Many buildings collapsed, especially soft-floor structures, resulting in multiple casualties and people trapped under heavy objects Construction materials make rescue missions more difficult. Although Turkey has experienced earthquakes in the past, poor enforcement of building codes and the presence of haphazardly constructed buildings contributed to the magnitude of the tragedy. Retrofitting soft-story buildings is a An effective way to keep buildings from collapsing during earthquakes, but an expensive undertaking that requires urgent action. Governments must enforce building codes and take proactive steps to remodel or rebuild buildings to ensure the safety of their citizens. As a global community, we must Efforts are also being made to implement effective seismic safety measures, especially in areas with high seismic activity, to prevent similar tragedies from happening again.
As a Turkish citizen, I am grateful to you for making this video. Such statements (like a major earthquake is approaching or the buildings are not resistant to earthquake) are made by important professors in our country and even by you, but they continue to be neglected. That’s the main reason.
I live in Mexico City and we deal with earthquakes too but many of us here are amazed about the damage scale in Turkey and Siria, even our AID and rescue teams are dealing with such a really big mess there. Our last big quake in 2017 showed us how terrifying is contractors and building companies with corruption or irregularities on construction process when they do their business, it’s terrible because idk if they forgot people are living and paying (a lot of money btw) for owning an space only for your home to became your grave. But here we lost like maybe 10 new buildings and some old structures. Feel so sad, hope most of people still under the collapsed structures may survive and being saved on time, pray for Turkey and Siria and keep sending help and AID teams.
As a Turk what is said is true.
I’ve been there since the first day of the earthquake. The biggest problem is hundreds of billions of dollars of corruption by the state.
I felt the earthquake here in egypt, i was watching tv series at the time, and i thought it’s a weak earthquake happened in egypt only to know that it’s happened in turkey and it’s huge.
Praying for Turkey and Syria.
I am a Chinese person and often hear of major earthquakes in both Taiwan and China. Taiwan, much like Japan, actually enforces building codes and so they have few fatalities despite strong earthquakes. Far lower magnitude earthquakes in western China (think Sichuan or Yunnan) produce extremely high death tolls because of “tofu dreg projects”. It appears that Turkey suffers from this problem and as such, many people who could be alive are needlessly killed. I can only hope that all those countries and regions will strictly enforce earthquake resistant building codes to minimize the loss of life.
Every country that is prone to earthquakes should have strong buildings ideally. The government should set aside some funds to help out the people who can’t afford it.
Pancake collapse is never used as a term in building failures related to seismic collapses. The collapses that are described in the video are known as soft story collapses. It is not because wood is used in the construction. Wood might be used in some remote villages with masonry walls on top. But in reality this was the cause of “infilling” masonry walls between building beam – column structural frame. This creates significant rigidity in the building stories above the ground floor, while the ground floor is without any of those infill walls.
Ideally we would want the building to deform and sway evenly amongst all the floors from bottom to top, this infill masonry walls in between the columns, does not carry any building load, but instead makes it heavier. This adds to the seismic loads the building perceives. And since it cannot deform amongst all the floors above, all the deformation gets concentrated on the ground story, also known as open story in such scenarios. These columns are heavily reinforced and made of reinforced concrete. But the “relative” softness of this floor leads to all the deformation which leads to ultimate collapse. Unfortunately this is a renowned issue and very few countries are taking steps to prevent such construction.
The peculiarity of this earthquake was also back to back earthquakes. A building no matter how good it is, is designed for experiencing one major earthquake. And since this site had major aftershocks, the heavily damaged building will unfortunately collapse as it would have been unsafe to occupy anymore. On top of it the fault characteristics were unique where the ground displacement, the rate and magnitude was large and all these densely populated regions were built right along the fault line.
42, 000 lives gone. RIP and condolences to the families
This is literally what came to my mind when I heard about the news. It’s just so bizarre seeing so many buildings collapse like that. So sad to see how far corruption and greed can lead to. My deepest condolences to those families who lost their loved ones.
Had this quake happened in Japan, the death toll would be a fraction of it is now. It’s sad that so many people died because of government incompetence and corruption.
Corruption and negligence is at the core of every problem. People usually ignore things until the inevitable happens. It’s always been like this and we just never learn.
You are right about the example shown in the end, it was actually a soft-story building. My parents were living across that building, I walked past that building a lot of times and there were a couple of businesses on the bottom floor including a tailor shop which I’ve been to a couple of times.
Absolutely terrible for the people of Syria and Turkey! What a tragedy!
My old school in new zealand busted down alot of the classrooms because they weren’t up to earthquake standards. This was because of the christchurch earthquakes and yet my school is in auckland. Buildings should definitley be closed down if they cannot stand an earthquake or at least, be able to give people enough time to get out. These pancake collapses are terrifying.
The scale of these earthquakes’ devastation can be traced back to the engineering or how strong these infrastructures are against natural disasters like earthquakes which, in the case of the 2023 Turkey-Syria Earthquakes, shows how the building standards/codes are either poorly thought-out or don’t accommodate a sort of protection or reduction against the magnitudes of earthquakes. In other words, since I saw the death tolls and casualties, I blamed the buildings or their lack of strength.
I work at a structural engineering firm and contractors here in America are bad about this too. Florida had an apartment building pancake collapse too, and it is just one of many contracting horror stories out there.
What’s astounding to me is the level of destruction and the enormous death toll this earthquake has caused. My birth country is also a country where earthquakes are expected, thus all of the infrastructure is built to withstand earthquakes of great magnitudes.
Just to compare some numbers:
Turkey Earthquake
Richter Scale magnitude: 7.8
Death Toll: 33,000 people and counting
Population of Turkey: 84.78 millions
Chile Earthquake (2010)
Richter Scale magnitude: 8.8
Death Toll: 525
Missing: 25
Population of Chile: 19.49 millions