Structural engineers say steel reinforcement can deform to keep buildings
from instantaneous collapse, but
many of Turkey's structures appear to have been largely concrete.
Although Turkey has building codes very much in line with North American
standards.
>> But were those building codes enforced?
And that's the real question being asked as scores of structures have collapsed
following one of the strongest earthquakes in Turkey in recent years.
Now, here's an explanation of Turkey's building codes, how they came about.
And then I'll explain how corruption,
pretty much mitigates the very codes that they discuss in this video.
>> After the 1999 quake in northwest Turkey, which killed more than 17,000
people, investigations found many construction faults,
including the use of corrosive beach sand in concrete.
Turkey reacted by updating building regulations several times,
most recently in 2018.
But look at this image of the Turkish town of Eskişehir,
particularly this white building over here,
Google Street View shows it was still being constructed in 2020.
The weight of the floor's suspended above a large empty shop space,
now that is a difficult design to survive an earthquake.
And despite the regulations,
recent satellite image appeared to show that it completely collapsed.
The same is true for several recently constructed buildings on this street.
Elsewhere, advertisements have circulated appearing to show buildings claiming to
comply with regulations, buildings which collapsed.
It's these kind of examples that some suggest show codes weren't tightly
enforced.
>> And the reason why they're not tightly enforced is because there's something
known as construction amnesties that provide loopholes for developers, so
they don't have to necessarily follow those codes.
Older buildings that were built prior to the codes passing also do not have to
abide by the new codes and
retrofit the buildings to withstand some of these stronger earthquakes.
So some of these construction amnesties are effectively legal
exceptions for the payment of a fee.
So if the developers just pay a little fee,
then they don't have to abide by the building codes.
And the structures that fell as a result of the earthquake is
what has contributed to this insanely high death toll.
As of this morning, the number was around 33,000.
It's gonna continue to climb, of course.
And the Turkish Justice Minister said Sunday that some 131 people were
under investigation for their alleged responsibility
in the construction of buildings that failed to withstand the quakes.
But if the loophole is baked into the system, I mean, they're gonna take
advantage of the loophole, and it seems like that's what's happening here.
>> Yeah, there's several different problems here.
And guys, this isn't just about Turkey, this about America and
all across the world.
There's a reason why we have regulations,
because there are rules meant to protect you.
You could argue that all of our laws are regulations.
Don't rob people, don't murder people, those are regulations.
Hey, when you're building a building, make sure that it is earthquake proof,
especially on a giant fault line, cuz that is the equivalent of getting those
people killed if you don't, and that's exactly what happened here.
So now, there are the old buildings that need to be retrofitted.
Boy, in Turkey, that is a hell of a process, and a lot of them are not.
I'll give you the numbers in a second.
And then there's the new buildings that were built since the 1999, a devastating
earthquake that killed 18,000 people in the western part of the country, right?
And overall, in 2018, the calculation, 50% of the buildings in Turkey,
that is 13 million buildings are not up to code.
They will not survive earthquakes.
That's half the buildings in the country, and there's two massive
fault lines that Turkey's on top of, and the third one arguably as well.
So when you do an exemption for a code so that you don't have to have the building
be able to survive an earthquake, it won't survive an earthquake.
So I don't understand how anyone could justify an exemption for
any building period, especially in Turkey,
where there's fault lines everywhere, right?
Absolutely unacceptable for one building,
let alone the thousands of thousands of buildings that gave exemptions to, why?
Money, it's always about the money.
And one more thing about that, the Turkish government has been collecting
an earthquake tax since 1999, just for a situation just like this.
And there's, at a minimum, $4.6 billion that has built up into that fund.
I mean, a lot of Turks paid tons of taxes into that fund.
Erdogan now says I don't know where it is.
>> Of course, of course.
>> I don't know.
>> Honestly- >> Yeah, and by the way,
I'll tell you where it is, it's in his goddamn pocket, not all of it, but
a lot of it, him and his stupid cronies and his family.
And if you say that in Turkey, by the way, you'll be arrested, so
that's the kind of tyrant that Erdogan is.
>> In 94 when there was a pretty big earthquake in Northridge,
California they passed new building regulations related to what's referred to
as dingbat apartment buildings.
And they're apartment buildings where they have the carport right underneath
the very first floor of the apartments, which isn't the most secure structure in
an area where you're likely to get earthquakes.
And so now all of those buildings have had to be be retrofitted as a result of
new regulations, but there is no construction amnesty there.
All landlords, mom and pop landlords, it doesn't matter,
all of them had to shell out a ton of cash to retrofit their buildings, and
that was the right thing to do.
Those are the right regulations to ensure that people don't die when an earthquake
happens and their housing collapses as a result of that quake.
Now, as I mentioned in regard to Turkey, the death toll from the 7.8 magnitude and
7.5 magnitude quakes that hit southeastern Turkey and
northern Syria 9 hours apart on February 6th rose to 33,179 on Sunday and
was certain to keep increasing as search teams locate more bodies in the rubble.
I should note that some reports indicated that as many as 36,000 people have
been reported dead.
The other thing I wanna mention is it's fascinating,
because it appears the government here is trying to deflect and
place all of their blame on the developers.
For instance, 12 people have been arrested already.
As I mentioned, 131 people total are already under investigation for
alleged responsibility in the construction of the buildings.
But again, I mean, if there's a loophole, the builders are gonna take
advantage of the loophole, and the fish rots from the head down.
If the government has those loopholes in place,
how are you gonna pretend like you are not at fault in any way, shape, or form?
That's insane.
>> 100%, in fact, right before the earthquake,
the Turkish parliament was considering more building amnesty's code amnesties.
Well, I mean, just like here in America,
of course the politicians are super corrupt, right?
And so now they have arrested those people.
Are some of them guilty?
Yeah, it's entirely possible that they are, right?
And did they cheat so they can make more money, not caring that 33,000 people will
die because they wanted to have an extra boat and an extra car, right?
Yeah, that might definitely be the case, or by the way, it could be scapegoats, and
that's the problem with corruption.
Once you have a tyrant like Erdogan, you don't know what's true and
what's not true.
It could be that it's 12 guys he really doesn't like,
it's 12 guys who are the most innocent,
it's 12 guys who are part of other political factions he doesn't like.
You know what this guy did in the middle of the immediate
aftermath of the earthquake, in the first 24 hours when
communication was the most important, he cut off Twitter.
When people were organizing on Twitter and coordinating to rescue people,
why did he cut off Twitter?
Cuz one journalist criticized him and he had that guy arrested, okay?
If you're getting confused here, Turkey is supposed to be a democracy.
But sometimes in a democracy, tyrants like Erdogan come in and they strangle and
strangle the democracy until there's almost nothing left.
That's exactly what Trump wanted to do and had started to do, and
it's what Netanyahu's doing in Israel.
We literally did a story about it today.
The right wingers are the same all across the world.
I'm gonna give you one piece of hope here in a second, but first,
two more pieces of bad news.
Of course, Erdogan comes in and says, well,
my opponents are politicizing the issue.
Let's not politicize this.
Whenever people commit political crimes, they then immediately say,
don't politicize, don't politicize.
And by the way, they're the first guys to politicize things that aren't even
political for their own benefit.
So just a monster through and through.
You know what else he said?
He said, well, maybe it's fate.
No, your job wasn't to protect them, your job was to
take tons and tons, billions of dollars in bribes.
While all those people died that were your citizens that you were supposed to
protect and afterwards you go, maybe it was fate, okay, these guys are monsters.
Okay, and the second horrible news is if you think Turkey is in bad shape,
nobody could even get to Syria.
So for so long, the roads were closed.
The Bashar al-Assad government is filled with monsters, and
that fish rots from the head down too.
So nobody could even get to rescue the poor Syrians.
At least there's aid in Turkey.
All right, finally the good news, yes, you're gonna see some of those videos, and
they're wonderful.
But remember,
they're a tiny percentage of the folks being pulled out of the buildings.
6 days later, an 88-year-old woman rescued,
a 6-year-old rescued, children, families.
>> Pregnant woman.
>> A pregnant woman, families buried together.
Every story is heartbreaking, but one guy survived all those days and they said,
how about the others, because he had been hearing them throughout.
He said I stopped hearing them three days ago.
And so they were in there, they were in there for three days.
They could have been rescued.
But by the way,
Erdogan didn't wanna use the military cuz he's not sure the military's on his side.
>> What a piece of crap.
>> What a terrible, terrible human being.
All right, but some of the rescues were done with joint Turkish and
Italian forces, joint Turkish and German forces, and
also the first time the Armenian-Turkish border has been opened in 35 years.
And that was so that more aid could come in, so God bless both governments for
making that happen.