About a tenth of housing in quake-hit southern Turkey has collapsed or is beyond repair and needs to be leveled, Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum said on Thursday
ISTANBUL (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th February, 2023) About a tenth of housing in quake-hit southern Turkey has collapsed or is beyond repair and needs to be leveled, Urbanization Minister Murat Kurum said on Thursday.
"We have inspected 577,689 buildings in the disaster areas, which corresponds to some 2.665 million apartments. Of those, 56,080 buildings collapsed or must be demolished or are severely damaged," Kurum told reporters.
The urbanization authority is working on a reconstruction plan that will cover 11 provinces, the minister said during a trip to Malatya, one of the affected cities.
Separately, Turkey is investigating whether negligence during construction could have amplified the number of casualties from what is the worst earthquake in the country's modern history. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said those responsible for faulty buildings would be punished.
Earthquakes of magnitudes 7.7 and 7.6 struck Turkey and Syria on February 6. The death toll from the disaster in Turkey has exceeded 36,000. The Syrian Health Ministry said late Tuesday that the final death toll from the earthquake in the government-controlled part of the country had reached 1,414 people, but the United Nations estimated the total number of deaths in Syria at 8,500.
