Engineer childhood friends plow rubble to assess Türkiye quake damage

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

KAHRAMANMARAS, Türkiye (AA) – Worried about his extended family living in Kahramanmaras, the epicenter of twin powerful earthquakes in southern Türkiye, Naci Furkan along with his “best friend” from school days drove down south to help quake-affected people.

“There was a lot of concern about well-being of my relatives,” Furkan told Anadolu as his friend Nurullah Eren was checking buildings in this southern province hit hard by the devastating quakes.

After hearing his uncles, aunts, cousins were “safe,” Naci and Eren arranged bags of tools and equipment for removing rubble from the damaged buildings.

“We collected the equipment including cutting machines and generators and drove 12 hours from Istanbul to Maras,” Furkan said.

The two friends since mid-2000s know each other from the days they were part time workers at a printing and publishing house in the most popular Turkish metropolis.

“We worked to support our study,” said Furkan, a mechanical engineer by training.

The 35-year-old man graduated from Duzce University in northwestern Türkiye around 2011.

His father, then a government worker, left Kahramanmaras, for the capital Ankara due to his official assignment. Furkan’s family later shifted to Istanbul in 1998 where he lives with his wife.

Eren’s family, on the other hand, has roots in the Black Sea province of Trabzon.

A graduate of Istanbul’s famed Yildiz Technical University, Eren, 34, studied civil engineering until 2012.

He lived in the provinces of Trabzon, Ankara, Kirsehir, Tokat, and many other cities since his now-retired father served the government as district governor in many places.

Eren’s family moved to Istanbul in 2006 after he graduated from high school and he lives with his doctor wife in the Turkish metropolis. His wife, a child psychiatrist, is currently attending the quake-affected children.

“There is a historic story that Maras and Trabzon are brother provinces,” Furkan told Anadolu, adding the biggest streets in the twin provinces are named after Trabzon in Maras and Maras in Trabzon.

- Knows Maras ‘like back of hand’

After realizing the challenge due to widespread devastation caused by the earthquakes, Furkan and Eren decided to approach the provincial office of Türkiye’s Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Ministry.

“My family members, cousins, all were involved in search, rescue and relief efforts so Eren and I decided to check whether we could provide any additional volunteer services thus we approached the provincial office of the ministry,” Furkan said.

The ministry, he said, had started the damage assessment process.

“The officials asked for our educational qualification certificates … my friend, one of the best civil engineers I have known, passed the qualification test and we were allotted an official code and provided with a tablet computer in which they logged in the ministry’s software application which is equipped with geographic information system support,” the mechanical engineer explained.

Furkan said his civil engineer friend is a non-native in Kahramanmaras and it was hard for him to locate the neighborhoods.

“But I, born and partly brought up in Maras, know my home province like back of my hand and thus our volunteer pair was fit to do this job,” Furkan added.

Since the recovery and rehabilitation operations began, the Turkish government has deployed over 6,000 personnel in 11 provinces hit by earthquakes for damage assessment.

On Feb. 6, the magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 earthquakes hit southern Türkiye. The massive tremors, centered in Kahramanmaras, also rocked 10 other provinces – Hatay, Gaziantep, Malatya, Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Kilis, Osmaniye, Sanliurfa, and Elazig. More than 13 million people have been affected by the devastating quakes.

Several countries in the region, including Syria and Lebanon, also felt the tremors that struck in less than 10 hours.

The major quakes also caused destruction and casualties in Syria.

- ‘Buildings on hills less damaged’

The two friends have surveyed over 200 buildings since Feb. 11.

“We are working in the field … visiting every house,” said Eren, donning a jacket identifying the duo as officially deployed damage assessment volunteers.

According to Furkan and Eren, there are almost 600 teams in Kahramanmaras and “every team has two members.”

In Serefoglu neighborhood, there are “no hills … it is plain and almost every building is damaged and more than 85% of structures are heavily damaged of which 10 have collapsed,” Eren told Anadolu.

“It is not possible to go back and live there,” he added.

However, the neighborhoods settled on hills have suffered less damage, the Istanbul-based civil engineer said. “We did not see any building has collapsed.”

He said settlements on hills are better than plains.

The surface soil on hills is “aged,” while plains have “fresh soil,” according to Eren. "I am talking of millions of years of age."

“The ground on hills is too solid, powerful to resist shocks like those of earthquakes,” he explained.

“In plains, the surface of the ground is new, fresh thus weak.”

According to Eren, the buildings during the first earthquake on Feb. 6 morning “lost their resistance.”

“Generally, buildings have in-built resistance but when the second earthquake hit, all buildings had already lost the resistance against the force pushed out by the earthquake,” he said.

“The situation of all buildings is connected directly to their ground situation … That is why neighborhoods on plains got much damaged.

“These are the differences we have noted since we began damage assessment,” Eren told Anadolu as he hit a concrete wall with his small hammer to check vulnerability of the buildings.

Besides Eren stood Furkan who is focused on the tablet computer in his hand. “We will continue (volunteer work) as long as we stand,” he quipped when asked when the duo will return home in Istanbul.

On need for survey of buildings, Eren said: "We observe that the importance of ground assessment has increased with the recent earthquakes."

- Worst earthquakes

According to seismologists Anadolu talked to, the Feb. 6 tremors that hit Türkiye are the worst quakes in 21st century.

Shinji Toda, a professor at the International Research Institute of Disaster Science at Japan’s Tohoku University who specializes in earthquake disaster prevention, said: “I have checked the very large inland shallow earthquakes that devastated cities and villages around the globe since 2000. I have found that five earthquakes, which occur on average every five years, amount to 7.8 magnitude shallow inland huge earthquakes.”

While most of the inland earthquakes occurred at depths of 10 or 15 kilometers (6 or 9 miles), "in case of Türkiye, the depth of the epicenter is 18 kilometers (11 miles)," he added.

“I am afraid to say that the earthquake in Türkiye is the worst,” Toda told Anadolu on Feb. 7.

At least 42,310 people were killed by two strong earthquakes that jolted southern Türkiye earlier this month, according to the latest official figures. Thousands of others were injured.

Nearly 7,200 aftershocks have been recorded since the Feb. 6 quakes, according to the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD).

Türkiye issued a level-4 alert soon after the quakes, calling in international aid.

Around 100 countries have offered assistance so far, with many having sent rescue teams.

Over 9,000 international search and rescue personnel flew into Türkiye to join post-quake efforts.

Teams set up a total of nearly 301,300 tents and 6,400 containers in the earthquake zone that were dispatched by ministries and relevant institutions as well as other countries and international organizations, according to AFAD.

A total of 14,740 local and international search and rescue personnel are currently working in the field, it added.

Four mobile social service centers were assigned to help in psychological support efforts after the disaster in Kahramanmaras, Hatay, Osmaniye, and Malatya. Over 698,200 people have received psychosocial support, with some 497,000 in the earthquake area and 201,000 others outside the quake zone.

Separately, at least six people were killed and 562 others wounded with 18 in critical condition after a fresh earthquake jolted Türkiye’s southernmost province of Hatay late Monday, Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said.