Turkey; Shoddy builders trying to flee Country ...

[dogtag]

Turkish Police are arresting the builders who in saving money
built buildings that would collapse if you kicked them too hard.
The earthquake brought them tumbling down with a resultant
death count in excess of 30,000. Hard to get the head around
that kind of statistic. My guess is that they'll be a bunch of
developers dangling, mostly by the authorities but likely some
by angry relatives. I can't supply a Tree but I can the rope.

[Vern Humphrey]

Don't give away your rope -- we need it to hang our own politicians.

[dogtag]

Don't give away your rope -- we need it to hang our own politicians.

I'll mail the Rope but I'll keep the Piano wire.

[barretcreek]

Late 70s early 80s the almost finished new wing on the Walters Museum in Baltimore collapsed, fortunately about 3a.m.
Found to be just about a sand castle.

[bruce]

Got to blame someone. Blame anyone other than the politicians and bureaucrats and of course the president himself. JMHO. Sincerely. bruce.

[Vern Humphrey]

I'll mail the Rope but I'll keep the Piano wire.

Piano wire is too messy -- it beheads the bastards and you get blood everywhere.

[Mark in Ottawa]

My understanding is that about 20 years ago, Turkey updated its building code to meet other European standards for earthquake design. That is all very well but it would appear that nobody enforced the new code. Being a cynical, sometime field construction engineer, my guess is that the current problem derives from two actions that occurred at the same time: shoddy materials and construction practice by the contractor and bribery of the inspectors, either from the government or the engineering design team or both.

As a related example, when I was in university, we were given a presentation on the earthquake that took place in Caracas Venezuela in the early 1960s. Turns out that Venezuela copied their earthquake code from the sample code prepared by the American Concrete Institute (ACI). There we many highrise buildings that pancaked and the ACI feared that there was a problem with their code. There wasn't. Their investigation showed such things as the reinforcing steel not actually connecting the columns to the concrete floor, with the horizontal steel simply being bent in a circle around the vertical steel, etc. I suspect that the Turks will find something similar as well as the concrete not being strong enough. There are probably also design failures.

As another aside, I was in western Argentina a few years ago when next-door Chile had one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded. We were asleep in our hotel room on the 12th floor when the building started to shake. I woke up, realized what was happening, turned on the light and woke my wife. We happened to have a two room suite and stood in the doorway between the rooms for what seemed an eternity - perhaps 15 seconds but an eternity when you realize that there is no possible way to evacuate. A few minutes later there was a second quake. Both Argentina and Chile have strong earthquake design requirements and damage was minimal in both cases since builders follow them. As I recall, about 200 people died in Chile. This was not long after the earthquake in Haiti killed 100,000 people including two from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, where I worked at the time.

[blackhawknj]

The high loss of life in the Armenian Earthquake of 1988 was blamed in large part on shoddy Soviet construction, cutting corners-not using rebar-anything to fulfill The Plan, ahead of schedule. And money changing hands.

[dogtag]

Even if I could, I'd never live way up in a skyscraper.
I'd be afraid of fire rather than quakes.

[dryheat]

From the looks of the place, no one made any attempt to earthquake proof anything. I don't think Turks are the sharpest tool in the box.

[Vern Humphrey]

The high loss of life in the Armenian Earthquake of 1988 was blamed in large part on shoddy Soviet construction, cutting corners-not using rebar-anything to fulfill The Plan, ahead of schedule. And money changing hands.

If you're familiar with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, that's what happened there -- everything was sub-standard, and the inevitable happened. That's Socialism in a nut-shell. The government builds it and the government regulates it. And the government can't regulate itself.

[rayg]

If you're familiar with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, that's what happened there -- everything was sub-standard, and the inevitable happened. That's Socialism in a nut-shell. The government builds it and the government regulates it. And the government can't regulate itself.

I'm wondering if that system doesn't also impact the construction of military equipment like tanks, planes, etc!

[Vern Humphrey]

I'm wondering if that system doesn't also impact the construction of military equipment like tanks, planes, etc!

Of course. The Russians go in for crude, cheap and robust. They do poorly in terms of sophistication, accuracy and technology. For 70 years, they have worshiped at the temple of Low Silhouette for tanks -- despite evidence that the taller western made tanks beat Russian tanks every time they go head-to-head,

[Allen]

The Russian tanks used in WW2 were reliable but crude. I read where to put one in gear you had to hit the shift lever with a sledge hammer. Sounds like no clutch to me.

[Vern Humphrey]

The Russian tanks used in WW2 were reliable but crude. I read where to put one in gear you had to hit the shift lever with a sledge hammer. Sounds like no clutch to me.

That's the T62, a post WWII tank. The problem was a shoddily made transmission.