NFPA Journal - Spring 2023 - 6

Editor's Note by Scott Sutherland
Executive Editor, NFPA Journal
Safety Wasteland
I
n February, as the death
toll from the earthquake that
brutalized Turkey and Syria
exceeded 30,000, Turkish
media began releasing videos
that offered at least a partial explanation for
how the devastation could have been so
thorough and unsparing.
One video captures Turkish President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a campaign
appearance in advance of the country's local
elections in 2019. In the clip, Erdogan recites
some of his government's most notable
achievements, among them the construction
of new housing for the city of Maras.
" We solved the problem of 144,156 citizens
of Maras with zoning amnesty, " Erdogan
says-and " zoning amnesty " is pretty much
what it sounds like. Under the plan, building
contractors were allowed to ignore the safety
regulations that had been enacted to help
make an array of buildings, including houses
and apartment towers, more earthquake
resistant. Offending builders were required
to pay a fine but were then free to put up
structures unburdened by additional safety
features. Buildings were erected faster and
cheaper, and thousands of families moved in.
Maras, or what is left of it, is located near
the epicenter of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake
that struck on February 6. Many of those
houses and apartment blocks that were built
for the added cost of a small fine are now vast
heaps of pulverized rubble, and many of the
families that called those buildings home are
broken, dispersed, or simply erased. Some
experts predict the death toll from the Maras
Earthquake could top 70,000, and it's not
hard from my current vantage point, a week
removed from the event, to think it could go
much higher. It is already the world's deadliest
quake in more than a decade.
In another video from 2019, Erdogan
rewound the same message. " We have solved
the problems of 205,000 citizens of Hatay
with zoning peace, " he said, deploying another
Orwellian euphemism for the waiving of
safety requirements in the interest of building
faster and cheaper. Much of Antakya, Hatay's
beautiful capital city, now lies in ruins.
We devote a lot of space in this magazine to
discussions of safety ecosystems and the components
and actions necessary to make them
work. What Erdogan and compliant Turkish
officials managed to create, however, amounts
to a safety wasteland, a vacuum perpetrated
at every level of government. Tens of thousands
of amnesty certificates were issued in
the provinces hardest hit by the earthquake,
in part to help fuel the robust building sector
of the country's go-go economy. Building
safety was an election-cycle impediment that
was quickly and easily dismissed.
There were voices throughout Turkey
opposed to the amnesties, and they are now
part of a widespread outcry over the lax
approach to safety and the Erdogan government's
response to the disaster. If anger
is what it takes to reanimate the country's
building safety ecosystem, so be it.
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6 | NFPA JOURNAL * SPRING 2023
EXECUTIVE EDITOR
Scott Sutherland
ssutherland@nfpa.org
ART DIRECTION
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