On 6 February of this year a massive earthquake hit central Turkey and northern Syria. In my erly reporting on it I had expressed some guarded optimism, hoping that perhaps this will not ed up being as much of a catastrophe as the 1988 Spitak Earthquake, for example. Sadly, my optimism turned out to be misplaced.
As of today, some 59,000 people are believed to have died in the earthquake, some 50,000 in Turkey and some 8,000 in Syria. Much has - and will - be said of the immense tragedy of this earthquake, of the dedication, humanity and heroism of local and international volunteers who came to the aid of those affected - and according to some estimates there were over 100,000 such volunteers - and of many other aspects of this horrendous event. But there is one very curious aspect to it and in short it can be named Erzin.
Ezrin is a city of some 30,000 people in South-Central Turkey. It is in the middle of the disaster zone, yet barely suffered any destruction. Very few buildings in it were damaged, let alone leveled. It is also known for a low level of corruption in the construction industry.
Some credit its good fortune to adherence to proper construction standards, others to unique local geography characterized by especially hard - and thus, vibration-absorbing - soils on which the city stands. It is hard to tell what saved it - and I am no geologist hence have no opinion of my own. But I suspect both factors had a role to play.
So what is the lesson? I guess one of many lessons would be that there is no such thing as benign corruption. It always does damage on some level. Sometimes it takes an earthquake to unearth it, pun intended.
As always - do your own research, use your own brain, make your own conclusions.
References
Why Did a Turkish City Withstand the Quake When Others Crumbled?
Cora Engelbrecht and Nimet Kirac, The New York Times, 17 February 2022
Huge earthquake hits Turkey and Syria
@borepstein , 6 February 2023
2023 Turkey–Syria earthquake (wiki) - (25 April 2023 archive)
Erzin, Turkey: wiki - location
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