And can the buildings be fixed?
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On the morning of February 6, a pair of powerful earthquakes, 7.8 and 7.6, hit Turkey and Syria. On top of that, the region was hit with strong aftershocks, which made the destruction even worse. The death toll is already in the tens of thousands with many victims still lying beneath the rubble.
Multiple factors led to this earthquake being so devastating, like fault lines, neighborhoods still reeling from war and delayed rescue missions. But what made this earthquake particularly catastrophic was unsafe buildings. According to the Turkish government, over 6,000 buildings collapsed because of this earthquake. And that’s likely because of the way they were built.
This video will explain how bad building design made the Turkey-Syria earthquake more deadly than it had to be.
Correction: The map at 5:49 has been updated with correct labels. A previous version of this video had incorrectly swapped Peru and Ecuador. Additionally, the animation at 2:32 was updated to reflect the columns can often be made out of brittle concrete.
Sources and further information:
This report from Turkish civil engineers helped us understand the impact the Izmit earthquake had on soft story buildings: http://www.bupim.com/yayinlar/bupim-pdf/ECAS66.pdf
This report published in the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering gave us some context on the history of Turkey’s building codes: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/245378123_The_August_17_1999_Kocaeli_Turkey_earthquake_-_Damage_to_structures
This explainer by BBC helped us learn more about misleading advertisements in Turkey:
https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826
This article published in The Conversation explained why Turkey’s buildings collapse like pancakes:
And we highly recommend this newsletter by Andrew Revkin on losses and lessons from Turkey and Syria’s earthquake
https://revkin.substack.com/p/gauging-losses-and-lessons-in-turkeys
For more of Vox’s reporting on Turkey, listen to Today, Explained’s episode here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/turkeys-man-made-catastrophe/id1346207297?i=1000600044893
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Thank God I'm not born in that corrupt area of the world.
Voluntary sterilization in return for a guaranteed high pension is the only long term solution.
As long as people live in earthquake zones and raise large families the problem is just getting bigger.
No steel
I was involved in construction in New Zealand where a seismic code 5 standard has been applied for many years. Earthquakes are extremely common but damage to buildings is rare.I was appalled at the standards applied in Turkey. Not only was the design woefully inadequate but when you see concrete crumbling under a pick it indicates someone has been cutting corners with the materials used. The concrete appeared the have a cold crushing strength of around 1200 psi which is about the strength of mortar not load bearing concrete
Turkey like a lot of third-world countries has a mafia in the construction industry which does not care about building safe and structurally sound buildings, there's your explanation.
corruption and capitalism
As I have always, always said:
No matter whatever the situation or context, CORRUPTION KILLS.
The world should be make a general rule about house buildings no matter if they are on places with earthquakes or not it should be built safe
Looks more like a commercial airliner collision rather than a collapse.
😂🤣
This is absolutely heartbreaking.
I hope these poor people get all the health and support they need.
🥺
Same in the USA with these "houses" built of drywall and plywood and then they wonder why they lose everything every year when they live in such a cheap box of cardboard in the middle of Tornado Alley.
I hate people that look at tens of thousands of deaths as not that much, imagine 1000 families or more going dying in the 80s and it would have been a national crisis
This earthquake is become huge disaster for Turkey because of 20 years old corrupted Islamic regime. Academicians are warning continuously in Turkey but government is behaving like deaf and blind. When Istanbul earthquake which is expecting in 10 years happened, ten times bigger disaster will be happened.
The Turkish government collected $36.5 billion as tax since 1999 İzmit Earthquake for the possible upcoming earthquakes. But we couldn't see that money because of high corruption, absurd spendings etc. . You know, bad government as usual. Now Turkish people are waiting 2023 elections. A little information about what is happening in Turkey.
Nothing will change in such countries. Too much greed and corruption.
A lot of developers are greedy. They will go for the cheapest materials available to save money. Hence the newer buildings are not as sturdy as the older buildings.
That’s terrible construction. 😢
There are so many dead that the scale of it is almost unimaginable. It is unimaginable. It's heartbreaking
The culprits are as always, corrupt government officials…
"Pancake Collapse" is not real. you're just staight lying here.
You're implying that the force and weight of the floor above struck the floor beneath it which caused the next one beneath that floor to also collapse and again on to the next below that.
This is not reality.
None of your footage shows this happening because "Pancake Collapse" is not a thing, it never happens.
I like pancakes. I prefer blue berry ones with butter… omg they are just so good delicious 😋
The collapses of the two World Trade Center towers were also "pancake" type except that the aircraft impacts and fires basically turned the areas where they hit into "soft stories".
Just a horrible situation! Too many of these builders were criminally negligent in their construction.
The problem is not engineering, it is corruption. Since Erdogan and his party are so corrupt this problem will probably continue to be unresolved.
We had a huge cyclone here in NZ and also had a 6.1 earthquake same day, but thankfully no building collapsed.
Poor structural code enforcement is a major problem everywhere in the world, but more prominent in those countries than in the West where tragic events provide some justice to the victims.
Glad you're not gloating for being thirsty…
Rest In Peace ..Christian Atsu…
A lot of people cut corners because they believe bad things will not happen to them, until they do. But Murphy's law
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the US and our Allie’s are ACTIVELY stopping aid and medical supplies from getting into Syria. This is a war crime, and if any of you had a soul at Vox you would be reporting on that.
I know leaders like Erdogan. I mean I know their type. They are populist politicians who attract support of the peasants by setting them against the 'rule obsessed elites / bureaucrats' and maintain power though that arrangement. They are very good at that job, but extremely inept and mediocre at administration. A kind of leader who boasts about undermining the city rules to 'favor' peasants (aka poor working class migrants from the countryside) can not be realistically expected to have better interests of nation building in their mind.
Now how do they treat animals they are cruel shame on them karma is a wonderful thing.and as far as equality nope none
The seeds of corruption are so deeply rooted in Turkey, that it will be quiet the challenge to make big changes, but there is always hope.
Oh my god, the buildings are built like death traps. How about rebuilding with metal shipping containers, and only two-story buildings maximum?
U shiftin the attention
So living on ground floor is more dangerous on not so tall buildings. Got it.
Thank god I live on second floor (third if the ground floor is first floor)..
In germany.
So no worries anyway.
They collapsed into powder, no rebar , more sand than concrete. Nothing up to code
When I grew up in Taipei I remembered experiencing earthquakes in my Aunty’s place which is on the 7th floor, it survived level 4s and level 6 earthquakes 😅 so ever since I was young I was curious about structures that withstand earthquakes. It’s obviously very very important 😢
There's one minor problem with the closing statement of this video. That is, that most of these soft-storey buildings were built because they were CHEAP (relatively) to construct. Higher safety (and code enforcement) standards nearly always means higher COSTS (including additional inspections and permitting etc.). So you can either have MORE cheap (and dangerous) housing/buildings, or FEWER safe and expensive buildings – which means that more people have to move elsewhere to live. It's a trade-off. If you're making safe housing into a human right, that only works if it is tiny housing – or they have to commute a long way from somewhere else.
3:03 Actually it's not neccesarily just poor building or such.
There's two types of waves that are caused by earthquakes.
The waves that shake sideways and the ones that shake up and down, lateral and longitudinal resp.
The ones that shake sideways can be devastating, but the ones that go up and down create the most
stress per amplitude on buildings.
This is because the one going up and down add inertia on the carrying capacity of the building,
and have G-spikes. Basically if the wave goes up, it gives the entire building upward momentum.
Then when the building reaches the apex, it stretches, while the building starts moving down again,
picking up speed and gaining momentum, but also due to the streching, there's a momentum
difference between the top part and the lower part, with a greater distance of travel.
Now when the building reaches the bottom, it quickly comes to a halt there, but the stretching
that happen earlier is still moving downward, and now the speed differential's breaking force
now applies many times the downward force from the usual at rest force.
If the structure of the building isn't straightforward or has a lot of bending angles, these will
break and once a few supports go, so does the carrying capacity lower, cascading into
a general collapse, the pancake.
If this happens during already existing longitudinal waves, it's fast almost without warning.
But, there's also another downside. When the building manages to live through it,
it may still be on the verge of a cascade collapse, which is then dependnat on how much
damage it already took, and whether or not that is an ongoing process.
Much like a break in a windshield of a car caused by a pebble, it slowly expands.
When having to deal with eartquakes in a city area, buildings simply must be built
with higher tolerances, but also with as little stretching during longitudinal waves.
The more it stretches the greater the G-spikes, which directly multiply the building's
downward force during such a spike.
If you ahve a building that's rated to lift 100 tonnes, and get's a G-spike of 2 G's,
the capacity is reduced to 50 tonnes, or rather the downward force at rest
is doubled for that period. So if the building weighs 60 tonnes, the G-spike
will overtax the building carrying capacity by 20 tonnes, since 2G's of 60 tonnes
will generate a downward force of 120.
(Actually 100 tonnes = 1.000.000 Newtons, 60.000 tonnes restmass = 600.000 Newton, etc.)
It's advisable to build buildings in an earthquake area with visible and readily
inspectable support beams or walls, so they can be inspected after an earthquake.
Alternately, build more sturdy, use a support H-beam frame or such.
The lowest part is the weakest, and once that goes, the pancake is already in the making.
Bring on the butter 🧈 and maple 🍁 syrup!
Very sad
Having being born in Chile, I'm always shocked at how damaging are earthquakes, which in Chile would be considered as minor earthquakes, in other parts of the world.
A lot of countries in earthquake zones simply do not have proper building regulation and enforcement.
Such a waste
Officials were aware of the problem, but did nothing
Ladies and gents this is why regulation is good. As much as sometimes we hate it, this is what makes the US different from other countries.
Did you guy knew japan had earthquakes of 7.0 or more magnitude 61 times.
It's not a civil war. It's a war between Russia, Iran, some militias like Hizbollah on one side and the Syrian people on the other.