As on numerous occasions since 2014, I’ve had the pleasure (sarcasm) of spending the week working in the Asian side of Istanbul in the district of Maltepe.
The TV has been on in my hotel room each evening simply for a bit of company, albeit that there’s very little that I understand, everything on it is in Turkish, even all movies are dubbed.
In a phone-call from my wife (in Romania) on Wednesday night, she asked me if I was affected by the apartment block collapse which had happened in Istanbul that afternoon.
I told her I knew nothing about it, that I’d watched the pictures on the news channel, and there was nothing that looked like a bloc collapse reported. After assuring her I was safe, I switched to the Qatar-based Aljazeera news channel (in English) and sure enough, in the next district to us Kartal, an 8 storey apartment bloc had collapsed killing 10 and injuring 13 others (including a 5 year old child) who were dragged from the rubble, some of which are likely to lose their lives due to serious internal crushing injuries. There are still more buried in the rubble, rescuers can hear their cries and screams while they’re desperately trying to get to them.
Apparently, the blocks were built in 1992 as 5 floor buildings. Since then, they have been extended to 8 floors, illegally. There’s about 6 blocks in that locality that have had this illegal modification from 5 floors to 8 and I imagine hundreds or thousands more illegal buildings all over the city.
Life is cheap here, so think on next time you feel the building rules and regs are too restrictive where you live, at least you’re not at risk of collapse as a consequence of some greedy land-lord cheating the system.
RIP to the deceased, and sympathies to injured and all affected.
https://news.sky.com/story/istanbul...-girl-5-pulled-from-rubble-in-turkey-11630839
The TV has been on in my hotel room each evening simply for a bit of company, albeit that there’s very little that I understand, everything on it is in Turkish, even all movies are dubbed.
In a phone-call from my wife (in Romania) on Wednesday night, she asked me if I was affected by the apartment block collapse which had happened in Istanbul that afternoon.
I told her I knew nothing about it, that I’d watched the pictures on the news channel, and there was nothing that looked like a bloc collapse reported. After assuring her I was safe, I switched to the Qatar-based Aljazeera news channel (in English) and sure enough, in the next district to us Kartal, an 8 storey apartment bloc had collapsed killing 10 and injuring 13 others (including a 5 year old child) who were dragged from the rubble, some of which are likely to lose their lives due to serious internal crushing injuries. There are still more buried in the rubble, rescuers can hear their cries and screams while they’re desperately trying to get to them.
Apparently, the blocks were built in 1992 as 5 floor buildings. Since then, they have been extended to 8 floors, illegally. There’s about 6 blocks in that locality that have had this illegal modification from 5 floors to 8 and I imagine hundreds or thousands more illegal buildings all over the city.
Life is cheap here, so think on next time you feel the building rules and regs are too restrictive where you live, at least you’re not at risk of collapse as a consequence of some greedy land-lord cheating the system.
RIP to the deceased, and sympathies to injured and all affected.
https://news.sky.com/story/istanbul...-girl-5-pulled-from-rubble-in-turkey-11630839