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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

#151

Post by preseinger »

catiopatio wrote: post #107
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…

An increasing problem locally (Boulder) is the use of the permitting process to push high-cost climate goals on home owners, leading to them skipping permitting and inspection entirely. Here, you’re required to choose at least three expensive improvements from a set of eight (iirc), ranging from relatively cheap (electric vehicle charger) to very expensive (rooftop solar). My home was built in the 1970s, the bathroom…

"skipping permitting" is probably better described as "breaking the law"

if you can't afford to meet construction requirements then you can't afford to construct, i guess

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

#152

Post by cm2012 »

adrianparsons wrote: post #146
flavius29663 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same applies to fire codes. As someone who has been close to almost-tragedies caused by fires, can you give me examples where fire codes are over-zealous? I've had family almost getting killed, even though they did follow the fire codes - the didn't even get a fine or a case against them. If you ask me, the fire codes were not strict enough in that instance.

> can you give me examples where fire codes are over-zealous? There's a small movement to eradicate the requirement for midrise buildings to have 2 stairways. Advocates point to European regulations and claim that a single stairway is just as safe as 2. Double stairways, they say, makes construction more expensive and results in awkward, undesirable apartment layouts. https://slate.com/business/2021/12/staircases-flo…

Yes, I suspect this rule will be removed more and more as the housing crisis continues across first world metros.

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

#153

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

adrianparsons wrote: post #146
flavius29663 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same applies to fire codes. As someone who has been close to almost-tragedies caused by fires, can you give me examples where fire codes are over-zealous? I've had family almost getting killed, even though they did follow the fire codes - the didn't even get a fine or a case against them. If you ask me, the fire codes were not strict enough in that instance.

> can you give me examples where fire codes are over-zealous? There's a small movement to eradicate the requirement for midrise buildings to have 2 stairways. Advocates point to European regulations and claim that a single stairway is just as safe as 2. Double stairways, they say, makes construction more expensive and results in awkward, undesirable apartment layouts. https://slate.com/business/2021/12/staircases-flo…

Many European regulations on fire safety are pretty stringent in other areas too that equally run up costs. Also certain buildings require two staircases but scissor staircases are permitted.

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

#154

Post by jl6 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #12
jl6 wrote: post #7

It’s not surprising at all that the lack of accountability goes right to the top, and it’s tragic that it takes an earthquake to expose the corruption. But Turkey is far from the only country with a corrupt, ticking-time-bomb of construction and infrastructure quality issues. Pretty much every low-to-middle income country has taken the semi-rational approach of cutting corners in order to do more with less. And the h…

> Pretty much every low-to-middle income country has taken the semi-rational approach of cutting corners in order to do more with less. For what it's worth, the "developed" Western countries have done just the same. Look at the fellow front page article about the train catastrophe in East Palestine or how virtually all companies got hit hard by supply chain interruptions - no matter if from Covid, the Ever Given or E…

So, it’s easy to be cynical here and point to examples of where high-income countries have had disasters, and from those data points conclude that everywhere is the same, but it really isn't the case that everywhere is the same. The fact we hear about failures, we see their political causes debated, and lawsuits filed, and root causes analyzed, and hands wrung in headlines… these are all symptoms of a system that is more or less working. These are the course-corrections and isolated incidents that serve to calibrate and revalidate that the accountability is there.

This is nothing like countries where corruption is endemic.

Witness Turkey’s recent arrests. What do we think is more likely: those contractors were the true root cause, and their arrests will prevent future building collapses during earthquakes? Or that they are merely the tip of a very large, very corrupt iceberg, and they will be made scapegoats to provide political cover that allows the rest of the system to quickly get back to business as usual?

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

#155

Post by preseinger »

flavius29663 wrote: post #108
RetpolineDrama wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean that is kind of the _ultimate_ goal isn't it? -Vaccinate the population, eliminate the disease in humans -Eliminate the disease in any of its natural reservoirs Once you're certain it's gone why continue vaccination? There's cost to that and those resources can then be dedicated to "active" diseases (perhaps with the instructions for that vaccine archived somehow).

Not just cost, but also personal risk. Every injection (or drug) you put into your body carries a risk with it, especially a vaccine. People should get vaccinated, but pretending there is 0 risk associated with it just causes more antivaxxers IMO. And don't tell me that 0.001% chance is the same as 0% chance; for the one in 100k people injured by a vaccine, I can assure you it's not the same...

is there any difference in outcome between those two numbers? like are you gonna do one thing if it's 0% and another thing if it's 0.001%? no.

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

#156

Post by college_physics »

> "The problems lie in implementation and oversight"

This is a pattern that applies to every facet of human affairs: The declared "reality" differs from the implemented (real) reality. The key questions are only: by how much, and what happens when events force a comparison of these two "books": The one we choose to believe for expediency or profit versus the ground truth.

We can be fatalists and accept that this is "how things are". But that is not what history shows. Civilisation is a process of reconciling arbitrary, emotional, low-information, "fake realities" with objective, verified, cool-headed, facts about the state of the world. The closer we get to reconciling these books, the less we will suffer.

The only problem is that we can't emerge from our historical habits fast enough. Earthquakes, megafires, megafloods, virulent pandemics. How many wake up calls do we need? The game is over. We need to reboot to a better society.

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

#157

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #35
xxpor wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's partially true, but it's really a combo of both. Things like dual staircase requirements, elevator size requirements, and sprinkler requirements make it extremely expensive to build any sort of housing. A recent affordable building in SF cost over $1 million per unit. That's completely unsustainable.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#158

Post by cm2012 »

To be fair to Turkey's builders - 800 year old castles in the quake zone were completely destroyed. So this was a once in a thousand years event basically, otherwise the castles would have been destroyed long ago. Very very hard to plan for this kind of thing.

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

#159

Post by emptyfile »

cm2012 wrote: post #158

To be fair to Turkey's builders - 800 year old castles in the quake zone were completely destroyed. So this was a once in a thousand years event basically, otherwise the castles would have been destroyed long ago. Very very hard to plan for this kind of thing.

[dead]

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

#160

Post by kube-system »

hummus_bae wrote: post #147
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.

Do we have building codes in the US? Does anybody know what they are? Does anybody know if builders are required to follow them?

yes, yes, and yes

Here's a good place to start: https://codecheck.com/code-adoption-by-state/

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