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Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

economist.com

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Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#131

Post by kube-system »

jmole wrote: post #37
biggieshellz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more due to exclusionary zoning than building codes. There is no reason why we couldn't build, for instance, a boarding house under modern building codes, which would create more affordable housing on the low end. The reason that doesn't get built is that the zoning doesn't allow it.

Setback, minimum square footage, minimum parking are all part of “building codes”, and can be used to enforce zoning and restrict development without sounding as political as “zoning”.

And those can be safety issues too.

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#132

Post by mschuster91 »

xxpor wrote: post #127
mschuster91 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things like dual staircase requirements, elevator size requirements, and sprinkler requirements make it extremely expensive to build any sort of housing. And you want and need precisely that in a house with fluctuating occupants of which a high percentage will have some sort of mental health issue. Cutting corners on boarding houses will lead to fire catastrophes.

No but here's the thing: for all of those regulations, the US still has more fire deaths than most of Europe. So they're not working anyway! https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/160882533241258393...

Defense in depth at work.

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#133

Post by ornornor »

tablespoon wrote: post #104
myself248 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do more with less" is perfectly fine and rational. "Do less with more and line my pockets along the way" is the problem. If customers were _paying less_ for the substandard construction they're getting, okay that's one thing. But if customers are paying more, and they _think_ they're getting sturdy code-compliant construction, but contractors at one or more levels are skimming money and using substandard materials a…

> "Do more with less" is perfectly fine and rational. > ... > If customers were _paying less_ for the substandard construction they're getting, okay that's one thing. Not really. Customers are likely not in position to rationally make those kinds of trade-offs, and even if they were, there's a good chance they're not going to be the one to pay the price (e.g. they sell the home, and the purchaser N sales later dies b…

Whether the buyers/victims are able to assess the situation or not don’t change the fact: they paid more for shoddier construction.

They might sell and move on but since this is a systemic issue, it’s very likely that their next residence has been built as shoddily and is just as dangerous.

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#134

Post by dsfyu404ed »

mabbo wrote: post #10

My wife has worked in the 'enforcing building codes' sector of engineering for her entire career. And it's so frustrating to watch. Everyone - everyone - is certain that the codes are all overzealous and their little thing needs an exception. Politicians get elected promising to 'get rid of the red tape'. And then an event occurs and we learn why these building codes exist. Like workplace safety rules, they are writt…

>It's so frustrating.

You know what's frustrating? Seeing someone who's clearly got enough exposure to building code and similar types of workplace requirements to know they're being misleading do it anyway because they know it's what the audience wants to hear.

A huge fraction of code is not written in blood. A huge fraction of those exception requests are legitimate from a "performance of the thing in question" system.

Much of the specific verbiage and the specific requirements in code come from a desire to free people like your wife from having to make and be responsible for the outcome of judgement calls.

Nobody's house ever burnt down because the wire staples were spaced 1" too far apart. It's just that a line had to be drawn somewhere because inspectors can't be expected to make judgement calls on such minutia at scale.

If clipboard warriors cared to explain this it to the people they'd catch less flak.

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#135

Post by dotancohen »

LarryMullins wrote: post #5
mrlonglong wrote: post #3

If anything, the Turkiye government are dodging the finger of blame. The fault lies with the politicians for not stamping down hard on developers who flout building regulations and/or allowing them to construct buildings with a 'waiver' that lets them get away with substandard building.

"The fault" isn't some finite and indivisible thing that needs to be assigned to only one group of people. Politicians are at fault for not cracking down on scammers, and the scammer contractors are also at fault for being scammers. One does not diminish the other, stop thinking of fault as zero sum.

Now I realize why it's called a fault line.

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#136

Post by tablespoon »

notch898a wrote: post #111
tablespoon wrote: post #94

Libertarians: this is why we have building codes. We don't need builders cutting corners and harming people years down the road, because profit convinced them that was the right thing to do for their own interests.

Why were the people living in that house so greedy that they cheeped out on buying/renting housing? There is soundly built housing in Turkey. If they were rich enough to buy sturdier housing then they could have done that. I'm not pointing this out to blame those people in any way, but it may be legitimately they can't afford better housing and this is the best they could do and the risk of dying in an earthquake was…

You're assuming the people affected did some kind of rational cost/benefit analysis, and just whatever choice they made was worth the chance of people dying. I very much doubt that was the case. You also seem to be falsely assuming there's only three options: be rich, live in a death trap, or be homeless on the street. That's not the case.

People can be tricked, be stupid, just have bad ideas, or similar. Building codes are a check against all that. And if they make a certain class of housing more expensive, there are always alternatives of other classes of housing.

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#137

Post by AlbertCory »

mabbo wrote: post #10

My wife has worked in the 'enforcing building codes' sector of engineering for her entire career. And it's so frustrating to watch. Everyone - everyone - is certain that the codes are all overzealous and their little thing needs an exception. Politicians get elected promising to 'get rid of the red tape'. And then an event occurs and we learn why these building codes exist. Like workplace safety rules, they are writt…

Since I live in the Bay Area which does have earthquakes, we have very strict building codes. Your water heater has to be secured to the wall, as one simple example, and I've personally heard of houses catching fire because of the water heater falling over.

That said: there are always "grandfathered" buildings which were built before the latest codes; unreinforced masonry, for example. What politician wants to tell the owner, "hey, sorry, you've got to tear that down" ?

So, aside from builders ignoring codes, I wonder how many of the buildings in Turkey were built before earthquake-proofing was required?

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#138

Post by tablespoon »

ornornor wrote: post #133
tablespoon wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Do more with less" is perfectly fine and rational. > ... > If customers were _paying less_ for the substandard construction they're getting, okay that's one thing. Not really. Customers are likely not in position to rationally make those kinds of trade-offs, and even if they were, there's a good chance they're not going to be the one to pay the price (e.g. they sell the home, and the purchaser N sales later dies b…

Whether the buyers/victims are able to assess the situation or not don’t change the fact: they paid more for shoddier construction. They might sell and move on but since this is a systemic issue, it’s very likely that their next residence has been built as shoddily and is just as dangerous.

> Whether the buyers/victims are able to assess the situation or not don’t change the fact: they paid more for shoddier construction.

I'm not disputing that's a problem, too. My only quibble is with the idea it's fine for people to knowingly choose substandard housing for some kind of discount.

Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

#139

Post by dotancohen »

myself248 wrote: post #89
mrlonglong wrote: post #55

Just out of interest for the layman, is there anything a non-expert like myself can examine on a building to assess its 'survivability' during an earthquake?

Is it more than 1 story? Then run, don't walk, away. Don't do tall buildings in seismic zones without the benefit of an incredible amount of engineering practice, inspections, audits, and enforcement. If you suspect the locals are corrupt, your safest place during an earthquake is a straw hut or reasonable facsimile thereof.

Japanese and Taiwanese buildings taller than a single story seem to fare fine.
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