Safe to go home? Turkey’s Engineers Seek Answers About Earthquake DamageExBulletin

Yasin Benarbasi walks through a building that he inspected and sustained earthquake damage, west of Antakya, Turkey. Claire Harage/NPR .

Switch caption Claire Harage/NPR

Yasin Benarbasi walks through a building that he inspected and sustained earthquake damage, west of Antakya, Turkey.

Claire Harage/NPR

SAMANDAG, TURKEY – Yasin Pinarbasi usually works in an office in the Turkish capital, Ankara. Now the civil engineer sifts through the precarious earthquake debris inside a four-story apartment building in the northeastern city of Samandag.

From the outside the building appears to be in reasonably good condition, but once inside there is an ash brick wall that has collapsed on the ground floor. Bits of plaster and broken tiles are strewn across the entrance.

“This building has been badly damaged,” Peñarbasi says. “It must be demolished.”

This building, like many others in urban areas of Turkey, contains shops at street level and apartments on the upper floors. Unlike many structures in the area, this one is still standing. From the outside, the apartments appear to be in order. But Benarbasi notes that many of the support columns on the ground floor are cracked or severed completely where they connect to the beams above them.

“This is very typical [earthquake] Damage to the pillars, which we call irreparable.

A crane digs into the ruble as people are still searching for dead bodies in Antakya, Turkey. Claire Harage/NPR .

Switch caption Claire Harage/NPR

The devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake on February 6 has killed more than 39,000 people and displaced over a million people in Turkey alone, with tens of thousands of buildings destroyed or severely damaged. More than 3,600 people have been killed in neighboring Syria.

Now, hundreds of engineers are moving through devastated areas in southern Turkey, as part of an operation to find out how safe buildings are for the people in them.

Benarbasi volunteers as one of them, inspecting buildings and reporting preliminary damage assessments to the government, which he says should make the final decision on habitable structures.

Cracked columns and beams

Buildings constructed over the past few decades largely have concrete columns and beams.

“In this type of building, if one or some of the columns are damaged like this,” he says, referring to the crumpled concrete where a column connects to the girder above it, “the loads are transferred to the other columns. Now they are fatigued.” This pressure can cause those remaining pillars to collapse. “These are serious matters,” he says.

Okut and Benarbasi inspect a crack in a support column in a building west of Antakya. Claire Harage/NPR .

Switch caption Claire Harage/NPR

Yasin Pinarbasi is one of hundreds of Turkish engineers who have volunteered to inspect buildings in the sprawling earthquake zone. It operates in the West Antakya region, Turkey. Claire Harage/NPR .

Switch caption Claire Harage/NPR

The National Engineers Association assigned Pinarbasi to an area on the road between Samandag and Antakya.

He has an app on his phone with every building in the area marked on a map. The people who have not yet been screened are white. Once the building is scanned, it appears green.

If the building has already collapsed, it enters “destroyed” in the application and moves on.

Anger at shoddy construction

The next building on his list is a restaurant with a large garden that serves as a wedding venue. “There are some cracks on the dividing walls but not on the beams and columns,” says Benarbasi, as he and his colleague, Onur Tezcan Okut, inspect the building.

This minor damage does not concern him. There can be cracks in non-bearing walls – some walls may have collapsed entirely – and the building can still be considered structurally sound. Pinarbasi looks for damage to columns or beams.

Onur Tezcan Okut, a Turkish civil engineer, stands near a damaged wall at a restaurant and wedding venue. The building looks fine at first, but there are thin cracks in the support columns at the back. Claire Harage/NPR .

Switch caption Claire Harage/NPR

The engineers remove some of the plaster to expose the beams underneath. Some of the restaurant’s windows are broken. From the front, Peñarbasi says the building appears to have performed well structurally in the disaster.

But then they go to the back of the building and find some thin cracks in the support columns. Even worse, the concrete of the pillars crumbles when you scratch them with a hammer.

“It’s likely that the concrete is of poor quality,” Peñarbasi says.

He opens the app on his phone, uploads two photos of the building and enters the estimated square feet and year of construction. Then he classified it as “moderately damaged”.

Nationwide, there was outrage over the buildings that collapsed in the disaster due to shoddy construction, substandard materials, and non-compliance with building codes. Some of the new residential buildings, which were advertised as being built to the highest earthquake standards, collapsed in the quake.

In addition to the tens of thousands of buildings that have collapsed, Turkey’s environment and urbanization minister says another 50,000 “need urgent demolition”.

Afraid to go home

Up the hill from the restaurant, Pinarbasi and Okut move into a gray, four-story apartment building. It is located alone on a hillside surrounded by olive trees. Still intact. It has all its windows and there are no visible cracks in its facade.

Onur Tezcan Okut walks with Samir Canar (left) around the building where his family lives, inspecting the damage. Claire Harage/NPR .

Switch caption Claire Harage/NPR

Gönül Canar cries while telling her experience during the earthquake when engineer Yasin Pinarbasi came to check on her house. Claire Harage/NPR .

Switch caption Claire Harage/NPR

When Benarbasi rings the bell and tries, no one answers. It turns out that several residents live in a barn behind the building.

Samir Kanar and three of his sons go out to talk to the engineers.

Kanar and his four brothers built the building in 2008. Kanar says he and his extended family were asleep when the earthquake hit, but none of them have slept inside since. After the shock of the disaster, they are all afraid to enter.

“It was very difficult emotionally,” Kanar tells Benarbasi as he leads him to the front door. “I have a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter and when she gets close to the house she starts crying.”

More than a week after the earthquake, the apartments inside were in much the same condition when the family ran out on the morning of February 6th. Glassware of preserved tomatoes was smashed on the kitchen floor. The refrigerator and cupboard doors are open and spilling contents. Tables turned and even a wood-burning stove.

But there are no cracks in the plaster walls. Peñarbasi says he doesn’t see any structural damage to the building whatsoever. However, Canar insists that if you stand in front, you can see that the building is now tilted. Benarbasi disagrees, saying that if it were tilted there would be evidence in its structural components, particularly at the corners. Kannar is not convinced but continues walking through the building with Pinarbasi.

Zainab Kanar, 9, stands in the barn where her family is staying as they dread going home. They prepared the fabrics to make a tent. Claire Harage/NPR .

Switch caption Claire Harage/NPR

Samir Kanar (left) and three of his sons emerge from the barn where they are staying. Claire Harage/NPR .

Switch caption Claire Harage/NPR

The resident’s sister-in-law, Gönül Canar, lived on the second floor. Her husband works in the Persian Gulf, so she was alone with her four children when the earthquake struck. She says she got all her children together and tried to lie on top of them to protect them as the room shook around them.

Now she says she doesn’t want to go back to her apartment. “I don’t think I’ll ever live here again,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes. “How do I get out of the building with four kids? Which one do I choose to pick up?”

The problem here is bigger than structural engineering. It is about fear, anxiety and a lack of confidence in the way buildings are constructed.

Gonul Kanar says she wants to build a small steel-frame house on the property, with only one floor so she can live on the ground level. She says she’d rather live in a shipping container than move back into the apartment behind.

Pinarbasi indicates that the building was not damaged in the application. With so many buildings damaged across the country, every engineer is trying to inspect 60 buildings a day. He and his teammate, Okot, walked across the hill to the next hill.

Samantha Balaban and Togba Usyk contributed to this story.

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