Rising Warnings in Istanbul About Potential Collapses of Thousands of Old Buildings

Fears are increasing in the Turkish city of Istanbul regarding the safety of residential buildings, following a tragic incident in the Gebze area of Kocaeli province, where a building completely collapsed, resulting in the death of all family members living there except for one person who miraculously survived.

The incident has highlighted the fragility of the urban infrastructure in the city, especially in light of repeated warnings about a potential devastating earthquake.

Civil engineering and geology experts have revealed alarming figures, the most notable being that approximately 600,000 buildings in Istanbul suffer from structural deterioration, with 50,000 of them at immediate risk of collapse, distributed across all 39 districts of the city.

Experts have called for the urgent evacuation of threatened buildings, particularly those constructed before the 1999 Marmara earthquake, which are over thirty years old, emphasizing that they are unfit to withstand seismic shocks.

These warnings come in the context of the aftermath of the February 2023 earthquake, which claimed the lives of more than 50,000 people and forced hundreds of thousands to flee from the affected areas to cities like Istanbul and Ankara.

Since then, calls for strict preventive measures have been repeated, including the demolition or reinforcement of old buildings and the updating of alarm and rapid response systems.

Local authorities face a significant challenge in dealing with this issue, amid increasing public pressure and fears that any delay in intervention could lead to new humanitarian disasters in the event of a strong earthquake in the region.