Codes and costs may trump engineering in building construction.
The recent earthquake near the Turkish-Syrian border has killed, at the time of writing, over 41,000 individuals and has collapsed over 6,000 buildings in Turkey alone. Turkey is a known region for serious seismic events and has endured significant earthquakes.
Turkish building codes from 2007, heavily revised in 2018, specify earthquake-resistant construction, and the city of Istanbul completed a $500 million project in 2015 to prepare that large city for a seismic event. While multiple and unconfirmed reports show that lax construction techniques and corruption resulted in many substandard buildings, the region contains many old, before-code structures.
The Turkish civil engineering sector is highly advanced and capable, so it seems unlikely that fault for this disaster will be found in the design process. Tighter enforcement of building codes plus enhanced disaster preparedness systems, as have been implemented in Istanbul, are logical paths forward in the aftermath of this disaster.
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