On February 6th, a series of earthquakes and aftershocks hit southern Turkey and northern Syria, resulting in the collapse of thousands of buildings near the epicenter, many of which were densely populated with Syrian refugees living in haphazardly built and largely neglected structures. This type of collapse, known as a “pancake collapse”, has made this one of the deadliest disasters in the region, even for buildings that were well-designed and constructed.
It is believed that the intensity of the earthquakes alone had the potential for destruction, but it was the soft story structures that made this earthquake even more devastating. Soft story buildings are typically large structures with multiple floors and an open plan on the bottom, such as a parking garage space for small businesses or extra homes. This makes the bottom floor the weakest, and unable to fully support the heavier floors above it. When an earthquake hits, the bottom floor may collapse and trap people underneath the heavy construction materials, making rescue missions even more difficult.
This is a challenge that Turkey has faced before, as a comparable 7.6 earthquake hit İzmit in 1999 and caused over 17,000 deaths. It became clear that poor building design and soft stories, which made up nearly 90% of building collapses, exacerbated the death toll in this disaster.
The Turkish government reintroduced building codes with an emphasis on earthquake safety after the 1999 disaster, but they were not enforced due to corruption. Retrofitting soft story buildings with materials that can support the weight of the structure, such as replacing or reinforcing columns with steel frames, reinforcing open walls, and drilling extra bolts and braces into the foundation, is the best way to keep them intact in the event of an earthquake. It seems like a simple solution, but retrofitting or reconstructing the 6.7 million residential buildings in Turkey is extremely expensive, estimated to cost $465 billion. As of 2021, only 4% of these buildings have been transformed. Even in countries like the US, retrofitting is an expensive undertaking and nearly impossible. San Francisco has every remaining soft story building that needs reinforcements, which would cost billions.
Turkey has been facing an additional problem: construction companies have been cutting corners and ignoring building codes for decades, and the government has let these violations slide. Recently, an advertisement for a building that was supposedly compliant with Turkey’s earthquake safety regulations emerged, but the way it collapsed suggests it was a soft story structure. The government is now cracking down on contractors that are allegedly responsible for these collapses.
The scale of this disaster is a result of complex factors, like geography, neighborhoods still recovering from war, and weak buildings. What makes this moment particularly harrowing is that while earthquakes along fault lines are inevitable, many of these deaths didn’t have to be. If cities enforce codes and treat safe housing as a human right, these disasters don’t have to be this deadly.