Patricia Green | Lessons for Jamaica from Turkey and Syria earthquakes

“... May God punish those who constructed these buildings that collapsed and whoever did not inspect them ...” wailed Zahide Acikgoz on Al Jazeera News 129 hours after the Turkey-Syria Earthquakes. Acikgoz and two of her children survived. She was anxiously waiting for her two other children to be rescued from the rubble of her highrise apartment building.

On February 6, around 4:15 a.m., local time, the first quake of magnitude 7.8 struck south central Turkey near the Turkey-Syria border. Just 11 minutes later, an M6.7 aftershock followed then to the north, another of M7.5. Between February 3 and February 14, the Turkish Ministry of Interior Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) states that there have been a total of 3,170 aftershocks. The quakes were relatively shallow, comments the US Geological Survey (USGS). The intensity of the shaking was severe, with the mainshock 18 kilometres or 11 miles deep, and “... an earthquake this size has the potential to be damaging anywhere in the world ...”.

By February 14, AFAD adds that the death toll reached approximately 31, 974. The United Nations estimates over 5.3 million persons made homeless by the earthquake, amid freezing temperatures and hunger. The images from Turkey-Syria bring tears to the eyes. Deep condolences to the people of both nations. Syria has been war-torn for over 12 years, and this natural catastrophe has resulted in further hardship. The stories of survival and miracles bring hope as rescue teams and international assistance pour into the region.

The cry of Acikgoz had exponential resonance. The BBC and other media reported that Turkey issued over 100 arrest warrants and climbing, connected to building construction failures. The Associated Press reported Turkish police taking at least 12 people into custody, including building contractors. Real estate developers were detained at airports. The Turkey-Syria earthquakes beg the question, does earthquake-prone Jamaica have similar vulnerability? What transpired in Turkey that would have led to these arrest warrants?

TECTONIC PLATES

First: Turkey sits on an active area with three tectonic plates, the Anatolia, Arabia, and Africa plates. Jamaica likewise lies between the North American and Caribbean plates, within a series of linked microplates, and straddles the Gonave and South Jamaica microplates.

Second: Turkey earthquake history, reports the World Bank, includes about 76 since 1900, resulting in approximately 90,000 deaths and affecting more than seven million people with direct losses estimated to exceed US$425 billion. On August 17, 1999 a M7.4 occurred in Turkey followed by another M7.2 on November 12, 1999, resulting in the death of 17,000 people and leaving more than 250,000 people homeless. On June 9, 2021, the World Bank approved $265 million towards this, and the government imposed an earthquake tax to corral billions of dollars for disaster prevention and relief.

Jamaica had 168 earthquakes during the 1990s and approximately 34 since until 2020, reports the University of the West Indies Earthquake Unit. The deadliest was January 14, 1907, measuring ‘violent’ on the Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) at IX being M6.5. Of the 48,000 people living in Kingston at the time, over 1,000 perished, and the aftershocks continued for the rest of the year.

Some 9,000 people were left homeless throughout the island, leaving damage estimated at £2 million, equivalent to £308 million (US$372 million) in 2023. The Jamaica deadliest earthquake and tsunami of 1692 caused two-thirds of the brick-built town of Port Royal to subside into the sea. French merchant Louis Galdy whose tomb remains today in Port Royal was swallowed alive under the earth then spat back out in an aftershock and lived to become a church builder.

Third: Turkey established modern construction codes for seismic resistance with mitigation strategies in urban planning to cope with earthquakes. Peter Kenyon reports September 7, 2017, in NPR that a key part of the urban plan was “... designation of hundreds of urban green spaces as evacuation points, where people could escape collapsing buildings and other debris in the event of another large earthquake ...”. Nearly 20 years later, many of those zones had vanished because government began “... selling off evacuation areas to friendly developers ...”. Turkish cities developed very fast in the last 15 years, “... and corrupt illegal zoning decisions benefited developers and angered the public...”.

RESILIENT STRUCTURES

Jamaica during the 1692 earthquake, mentions Richard Dunn in Sugar and Slaves, witnessed the stick and thatch houses built by the enslaved Africans as earthquake resilient. Port Royal was rebuilt afterwards, replacing brick with this timber technology. However, by 1703 a fire destroyed the town. Kingston, founded 1692, was also a brick town devastated by the 1907 earthquake. Jamaica Building Act changed in 1907 to earthquake-resilient timber-framed construction. Insurance companies rebuilt Kingston using reinforced concrete standards equivalent to California, which had experienced an MMI of VII to IX earthquake on April 18, 1906.

Jamaica mitigation strategies included urban planning of detached housing developments. By 2017, government established a Provisional Development Order (PDO) allowing density and height increases in 19 Local Planning Areas across the Kingston Metropolitan Area. The Gleaner article of December 17, 2020, ‘Illegal! Court slaps KSAMC, NEPA for authorising Birdsucker development.’

In The Gleaner letter to the editor of December 7, 2022, ‘Consider the rights of the citizens, Mr PM’, a neighbourhood group called ‘Citizens Rights to the City’ elaborated on widespread breaches that “... communities have had an explosion in multistorey, residential development and commercial activity ... far ahead of the capacity of the KSAMC and other agencies to ensure compliance with building and planning laws ...”.

Fourth: Turkey government agency responsible for enforcing building codes acknowledged that more than half of all buildings, accounting for some 13 million apartments, were not in compliance with current standards. On February 10, AP reported on ‘Turkey’s lax policing of building codes known before quake.’ Prior to the last presidential and parliamentary election in 2018, the government granted amnesty to companies and individuals responsible for certain violations of the country’s building codes, “... by paying a fine, violators could avoid having to bring their buildings up to code ...”. Violations included homes built without permits, buildings that added extra floors or expanded balconies without authorisation and the “... existence of so-called squatter homes inhabited by low-income families ...”. New apartment buildings “... advertised as safe were ravaged by the quake...”, resulting in thousands of deaths, the destruction of thousands of buildings, and economic losses. The breaches were largely ignored, “...experts said, because addressing it would be expensive, unpopular and restrain a key engine of the country’s economic growth ...”.

Will Jamaica’s proposed confirmation of the PDO potentially carry development ‘amnesty’ as with Turkey? What disaster-mitigation lessons should Jamaica learn from Turkey?

Patricia Green is an architect, historic preservationist, independent scholar and regenerator. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com