Concerns are growing. Istanbul residents fear an earthquake may bury them alive

As pictures of the devastation in Turkey’s south continue to fill TV screens, concerns are growing among Istanbul residents who fear a deadly earthquake could hit the city anytime.

A couple of powerful earthquakes from February 6 and the ongoing series of aftershocks have claimed almost 50,000 lives in the country and neighbouring Syria, while making millions of survivors homeless.

Amid the humanitarian disaster, experts predict Istanbul – home to 15 million people – is due its own earthquake before 2030. A study from just three months back said tremors here could kill up to 90,000 people.

The race is now on to get the city completely ready. Around 70% of Istanbul’s buildings are considered potentially unsafe since they were built before rule changes that enforced stricter construction standards in 1999.

Since the deadly quakes in the south, there have been over 100,000 new applications to the Istanbul municipality for building safety checks. Landlords as well as tenants can now apply but there are yet no official numbers representing how many buildings fail the test. Moreover, the compensation to help those who need to move out of condemned buildings is also low.

While the city’s mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, has made certain new promises, such as the preparation of temporary shelters and more training for rescue personnel, many fear it still isn’t enough.

The next step is the development of a 50 km-long fibre-optic based early warning system. But even if they had notice that an earthquake was approaching, where residents of a city so huge would go to seek shelter is hard to know. Turkey’s crucial presidential and parliamentary elections are just two months away. Overnight, quakes and the government’s response have joined the country’s economic crisis as a key issue for voters.

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