Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams
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Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams
#2Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams
#3If 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.
Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams
#4In a twist of fate, the Chamber of Civil Engineers building is one of the few that withstood the quake.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/10yw2...
Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams
#5If 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.
Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams
#6Construction scams? More like government approved construction scams. In recent years, the Turkish government issued many exemptions for projects that were built or expanded in violation of the official buidling rules. For a small fine (which yielded the treasury almost three billion euros) they could do whatever they wanted, going against all requirements and obligations for safe building which is nature-disaster resistant.
Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams
#7It’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 high-income countries have arguably swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, with very high standards that lead to very high prices for construction of anything (and a few unfortunate places which enjoy the high price of high standards, and enough corruption to bypass these standards).
Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams
#8It won't matter.
Things will not change.
Some empty gesture will take place to assuage the outrage but nothing will change.
Bets are open on who will be scapegoated for this.
Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams
#9In a twist of fate, the Chamber of Civil Engineers building is one of the few that withstood the quake. https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/10yw2...
That will only result is in conspiracy theories about why that happened.
Re: Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams
#10My 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 written in the blood of the dead.
But given time, the events the preceded their writing gets forgotten. I've never seen any of these buildings fall down, so why do we need so many rules to prevent buildings from falling down? They just make it more expensive! Those greedy bureaucrats and building officials just want to prevent development!