Massive earthquake turned poor quality concrete ‘into sand’, Erdogan says

The negligence of builders in Turkey, which is said to have contributed to the death toll from Sunday’s huge earthquake, “amounts to murder” the Turkish prime minister has said.

So far the death toll from the 7.2 magnitude quake has already exceeded 500.

“When we look at the wreckage, we see how the material used is of bad quality,” Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. “We see that people pay the price for concrete that virtually turned to sand, or for weakened concrete blocks on the ground floors. Municipalities, constructors and supervisors should now see that their negligence amounts to murder.

“Despite all previous disasters, we see that the appeals were not heeded,” the Guardian reported him saying.

Turkey sits on a fault line and new building codes have been introduced following previous quakes but Time magazine cited a Parliamentary report last year saying they were not being enforced.

Topics