A Concrete Disaster – A review of structural failures in Turkey and Syria

Jan - Feb 2023

Rajkumar Gade

Rajkumar Gade is a civil engineer working in the area of Disaster management for more than 15 Years. He has multi-country experience of working in Tsunami, Haiti Earthquake, Dam Bursts, Cloud Bursts, Floods. He visited Turkey and Syria after the February-23 Earthquake to conduct need and technical assessments of structures.

This article emphasizes the need for resilient infrastructures for earthquake risk reduction.

A powerful and devastating earthquake (7.8 Magnitude on the Richer Scale) struck in the early morning hours at 4.17 am on the 6th of February 2023. People were in a deep sleep in the early hours and the tremors created havoc in eleven provinces of Turkey and two provinces in Syria. After Nine hours a second earthquake with (a 7.5 Magnitude on the Richer scale) doubled the impact, leading to loss of life and a massive blow to housing infrastructure and public assets. This is the highest magnitude earthquake recorded in Türkiye (another name for Turkey) since 1939 and was followed by around 7,184 aftershocks Combined, the earthquakes have affected an area of about 400 km2 including the large Turkish industrial cities of Adana and Gaziantep and the surrounding cities of Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Kilis and Malatya.

The epicentre was pazarcik district of Kharmanmaras province as shown in the map below, and the cause of the earthquake has been identified as the tectonic movement and adjustment on the Antolian fault. As per sources, the affected region is home to 23 million people, and 2 million people are just as Syrian refugees in Turkey. If we look at the affected area in overlapping with the tectonic map of the geology. One can imagine, how the earthquake occurred due to adjustment of plates. The affected area falls under the crossroads of three tectonic plates, Eurasian, Arabic and the Anatolian. The map below (Picture 2) shows the plates and fault lines and gives understanding of the geological cause of current earthquake.

The North Anatolian fault stretches across the northern Turkey and its movement is strike-slip in nature, The fault runs along the boundary between Eurasian plate and the smaller Anatolian plate but movement in the area is controlled by collision of the larger Arabian plate to the south and the Eurasian plate to the north. The fault is a transform fault with the Anatolian plate and the Eurasian plate sliding each other (The Geological society, Plate tectonic series,27/2/23). As per observation, the wave passed from Kharmanmaras towards Hattay province and in Samandag, which is the nearest city to the Mediterranean Sea, where seawater raised to 0.5m higher than usual. The most affected provinces are Hatay, Gaziantep, Kharmanmaras, where one can see full-scale damages, where towns are erased to ground level, and few structures are partially affected but cannot be habituated. Also need to take in consideration, the impact was not uniform on settlements, some towns and villages did not have or very less impact, even though they were in the same region, reasons to be examined for the waves travelled in the affected areas.

Terror of the Tremors

More than 45,089 people have been reported to have been killed across Turkiye and 5911 in Syria as of (AFAD press bulletin-36, on 1/3/23) with more than 108,000 injured. More than 345,000 individual units, 90,609 buildings either collapsed or were heavily damaged in Türkiye, including at least 15 hospitals (OCHA,19/2/23). About 10,000+ houses reported partially or fully damaged in Syria (OCHA,23/2/23). The rental values in other provinces of Turkey have increased to 25-50% due to a sudden surge in people leaving for safe provinces. The runway of Hatay airport was split and uplifted and could not be repaired quickly to operate and handle response. Heavy snow in the region has further exacerbated the situation, in addition to heavy rains, making it harder for those who are displaced from their homes due to damage and/o  safety concerns as well as for refugees and internally displaced persons residing in tents. Turkey raised a call for international assistance to respond for earthquake catastrophe. A total of 332 tent cities and 360,167 tents were installed in the quake-hit region. 1,440, 668 citizens are sheltered in tents. In addition to the establishment of 189 container cities, the infrastructure works as well as the installation of 90,914 containers continues. 34,120 citizens are provided with shelter in containers. In the shelter areas, an additional 2284 mobile showers and 5058 toilet containers were put into use. The total number of citizens who were given shelter in the region affected by the earthquake is 1,593,808. In other provinces, a total of 329,960 citizens affected by the disaster are provided with accommodation services (AFAD, Press Bulletin-37, on 2/3/23). This massive arrangement of shelter cities and facilities were provided due to the loss of assets in terms of housing and the great failure of structural elements in construction. The cost of the damage is assessed as more than 100 billion USD, by the turkey government.

Understanding the Background

One has to understand the background of the place, the timing of the earthquake, and regions’ socio-economic factors that contributed to severedamages are narrated below.

  1. The timing of the earthquake early in the morning was a key factor in fatalities, where families were in a deep sleep and the region was under severe cold climatic conditions.
  2. Prolonged duration of the tremor for 40 seconds could not allow people to evacuate and were left in shock, not knowing how to react.
  3. Tremor jolted the area in sudden jerk motion, and it was difficult to even stand upright.
  4. Housing in the valleys was more impacted than uphill.
  5. Historically, it is a very well-known fact that the affected area, is sitting on a very active crossroads of a tectonic faulty zone and people and government are very well aware about the fact.
  6. In the last two-three decades, the affected provinces, Hatay, Gaziantep and Karmanmarash had seen significant industrial growth and a rise in population, coupled with war on the other side bringing illegal immigrants and refugees taking shelter. The cities swelled beyond their capacity, unplanned growth, unplanned settlements, and new age technological advancements in construction were not at all suitable to the terrain was encouraged.
  7.  The poorer settlements were quickly developed by realty agents for the demand and very shabby construction procedures were adopted, which were mostly habituated by Syrian communities who couldn’t afford high rental value settlements. These areas were mostly damaged due to earthquakes.
  8. The red patch shown as the affected area also has a representation of areas from the Syrian border, which have been under the control of Turkey and free Syrian army. Two major cities affected are Afrin and Idlib, where millions of refugees live.

Reasons for structural failures:

  1. RCC structures, which are meant to protect the lives of people and provide time to evacuate, failed miserably and led to the loss of lives and assets.
  2. Most of the heavily damaged buildings had flaws in construction practices, poor workmanship, and bad quality materials used.
  3. It was clearly evident on the sites, that minimum engineering principles were not followed and the loads went into disarray once the stilt columns were moved, leading to the collapse of the structure in a sandwich manner, killing people under the heavy loads.
  4. In many of the buildings, it was observed that the structural elements like beams were totally missing, and a flat roof technology was used making the roof thicker than required to make space for concealed beams.
  5. Column-to-beam joint or column-to-Roof joint was totally absent, which led to the failure of columns and roofs as shown in Pic 4 below.
  6. It was observed in many sites, the reinforced concrete mixture had limestone as one of the aggregates, which is generally a weak stone in comparison to granite for concrete. Many samples tested for concrete failed in load test, which means the concrete never attained its full strength. This can be lack of proper curing with water or bad mix and proportions of water, cement, and formwork.
  7. The design of the structure also had its share, as in the field it was observed, the square shaped buildings had less impact and they withstand the effect, but the elongated building or the rectangular ones had terrible impact of earthquakes as shown in picture 3 below.
  8. Most of the building failed at plinth level or at stilt level, which led to full collapse of the building or partial damage.
  9. Partial damage as seen in many buildings, especially elongated cracks all along the walls and failure of windows and doors and cracks developed along the elements, due to lack of ring beams in the walls at regular intervals.
  10. In many buildings one or two columns failure was observed, leading to disorientation of entire structure as shown in picture 5 below.
  11. The long walls, such as boundary walls collapsed in many places exposing the entire plot without safety and security.
  12. Impact of the lack of shear walls in individual buildings and apartments was high and the tremor could tear apart the buildings into parts.
  13. The staircases also failed in many buildings, not letting the people evacuate as shown in Picture 6 above.
  14. Load-bearing structures were highly affected, as they could not withhold the shocks from the tremors.
  15. Critical infrastructures such as schools and hospitals were also damaged due to various reasons, which made people inaccessible to basic services to health and immediate shelter.
  16. The amenities like water, power, and gas supply were closed due to accidents of fire reported, which made people leave their households and take shelter in mosques, and camps, but for many, they had to evacuate to safer provinces.
  17. Aftershocks and continuous falling of structures made panic among people leding to delays in going back to own houses. It was well observed that those who lived on the top floors were well saved and those who lived on the first and second floor, succumbed in the tarp of debris.

Issues with Risk Governance:

  1. In spite of knowing the entire region is an erthquake prone as has a historical evidence of earthquakes in the region, town planners selected wrong material composition for construction. Wood and a mix of steel is an ideal material with not more than two storied structure to appropriate design. But the entire eleven affected provinces have chosen reinforced cement concrete (RCC) structures and high-rise apartments and individual dwellings of various proportions, which was unethical on part of elevating risk for people.
  2. In spite of having building codes and bylaws in the country after the 1999 earthquake in Turkey, construction was not seen to abide by the standards and followed the rules strictly.
  3. The infrastructure development was not a pro-earthquake-prone area and there were no resilient features visible in the construction, it is a failure of disaster governance of infrastructure.
  4. Previous lessons learned from earthquakes in the country never reflected in construction practices, nor the best practices from countries like Japan were taken into consideration in town planning.
  5. It was observed, that more than 130 realtors were arrested due to bad construction and failure of ventures after the event.

In Syria, a war-torn country, had no proper construction codes, nor good engineers and architects, nor an institution to regulate the construction, made the structures more vulnerable and people had to pay the cost with lives and loss of assets.
Lessons learned:

  1. Earthquake-prone zones need special development support to make cities safer with resilient policies and stricter implementation of bylaws and guidelines.
  2. With proper material selection for earthquake-prone zones, lives can be saved, and minimize loss of assets.
  3. People should be made aware of their rights in disaster management laws and policies, so that they can access to best services from the construction industry and cannot be easily cheated by realtors.
  4. Critical infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, railway lines, airport runways, and roads should be constructed in a robust way to withstand any adverse impacts on services.
  5.  Apartments and big houses need a thorough evacuation plan, which was lacking in all the damaged sites. Drills should be regularly conducted and well-maintained data and evacuation drills should be organized.
  6. Large-scale disasters, such as the similar magnitude earthquake need a regional and global agreement with governments for quicker action on search and rescue operations.

Conclusion

Each and every life matters and every investment matters, the Turkey-Syria earthquake has given all of us lessons to learn. One of the key lessons is that there should be no compromise on building safe cities in disaster-risk-prone areas. Every individual should be aware of rights and should work towards and demand better basic facilities as every individual has the right to life, no one can be cheated in the pretext of someone’s greed and poor quality infrastructure. Disasters open new opportunities to build back better. The government, policymakers, town planners, engineers, architects, builders, citizens, and all the stakeholders should work towards resilient infrastructures and follow appropriate guidelines to reduce the risk of earthquake.

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