Is 500 metres from the fault line enough?

Take a piece of glass in your hand and throw it on the ground. It will break, right? And it will shatter.

Now take one of the broken pieces of glass in your hand and look at it. How is it broken? With what kind of shape is it broken? 

Is it possible to know or guess the shape of the broken pieces from the beginning? I think it is a bit difficult

It will be a very misshapen piece of glass.

If you try the same thing again by first drawing a line or two on the glass with a glass cutter, the glass will probably break in the places where you made the cuts. Because now we determine the places that need to be broken by ourselves.

OK, if you throw it a little hard, the glass will break into meaningless pieces again, but the places where it breaks first will be the places you have drawn.

In yesterday's article, I mentioned that the government has abandoned its work and is now preoccupied with the elections and intends to rapidly build residential buildings.

Even if you lay the foundations for houses for election propaganda without making a proper plan, maybe you can fool some people, but this is not how it works.

Moreover, in the statements made, it is said that new settlements will be built at least 500 metres away from fault lines.

But do you really think this 500 metres distance is enough?

If I leave my house, the nearest supermarket is about this distance. Well, I can go to the supermarket in maximum 10 minutes. So this 500 metres seems like a very small distance to me.

Let's analyse this issue.

But before we find an answer to this, let's take another look at the example of breaking glass at the beginning of the article. Before the glass was scratched, it was broken into many meaningless pieces, right?

Yes, I actually wrote a more detailed article on fault lines before. The title of the article was "What is the cause of these earthquakes?".

As I mentioned in that article, we do not yet know exactly where the fault lines pass. It is also not possible for us to know. 

Fault lines are not a straight line, just like the cuts we make on glass, and it is not possible for them to form under our control.

The earth's crust is quite thick and it is not possible to know exactly in which direction the cracks in earthquakes occur.

Most of the images shown on some channels on the soil, saying that the fault line passes through here, are only cracks or splits in the soil due to shaking. There is no such thing that there will be a fault line under that cleavage.

In fact, most of them are either splits in the filled soil near a stream, or cracks formed as a result of landslides near a hilly place.

In fault lines, there is a lateral slippage of metres between two tectonic blocks underground, or one block rises higher than the other, and the other goes under the other. 

In other words, fault fractures extend metres underground. Although they appear to be in the soil on the surface, in fact the rocks under the soil are cracked, and the rocks slide horizontally or vertically on each other. If this crack has reached the surface, tectonic movements between the blocks can be observed from the surface, depending on the type of fill on the rocks. However, especially when there is an alluvial layer on it, it is sometimes not possible to detect it visually from the surface.

In addition, just like on glass, there is no guarantee that the tectonic layers will break again from the places we call fault lines today in every possible earthquake. In the last earthquake, the rocks may have slid on each other as much as they can and locked together. In the next earthquake, the blocks between which cracks were formed in the previous earthquake may move together and a new fault line may break in parallel, perhaps kilometres away from a weak place on the stratum.

In other words, it is not possible to know when and how the earth will move.

Although very detailed academic studies are currently being carried out, unfortunately it is not yet possible to reach a definite conclusion.

As a result, we do not have the chance to check and find weak places other than the existing faults on the strata. 

Just like the broken places on the glass, that is, the fractures actually occur in places with minor thickness differences of the glass, it is very likely that new fault lines will form in a new earthquake from weak places on the strata that we do not know yet.

In fact, geologically, we can only examine the fault fractures that have already reached the surface, and we can only estimate other possible risky places by calculations. Or we can find existing fault lines by ultrasonic or similar methods. 

However, in reality, the possible risky places cannot be known exactly. 

Because we have very little historical information about earthquakes. 

We try to determine the dates of the earthquakes that are estimated to have occurred in that region from a number of historical documents, and using these dates, we make some calculations by measuring the slip distances on the blocks with geological examinations and we make predictions for the next possible earthquake. Based on on-site measurements, we try to calculate the estimated magnitudes of earthquakes that have occurred in time.

In short, I can say that it is actually a bit of a mystery how precise information the earthquake risk maps, which are drawn up with these groping calculations, actually contain.

We civil engineers are obliged to use these maps and we calculate the building based on the loads that may come to the building carcass in a possible earthquake.

With such vague information, sometimes the earthquake is much higher than predicted and even if a brand new building is built, even if it is calculated according to new standards, it collapses!

As I always say, this is a matter of economy. 

Building construction standards are also based on a certain economy. 

No matter how finely you calculate, even if you have done the inspection, if the aim is to prevent loss of life by allowing the building to receive some damage in an earthquake, but considering its survival, sometimes the calculation at home does not fit the market, and in an earthquake with a magnitude above the estimates, the building you have built will still collapse. 

That is why in my recent articles I have been expressing the idea that we need to build tunnel moulded buildings. 

I also say that floor limitation is necessary. 

Because if tunnel moulded buildings are well constructed and the storey height is not too high, the risk of collapse in an earthquake is at a minimum. 

They are not buildings that will be damaged even at the minimum level accepted by the building standards. 

They are very safe buildings that are very difficult to be damaged even in the highest earthquakes.

Also, if seismic isolators are used at the foundation level, I believe that nothing will happen even in the biggest earthquakes. 

Even if the concrete quality is bad, I think they are very difficult buildings to collapse because their safety coefficients are quite high. But as I said, the floor height should not be too high.

Yes, it is expensive, but as I said before, this is life, no expense can replace the lives lost, no matter what you do, the lives lost cannot be brought back.  

I wanted to write a few things about our building standards while I was watching people's cries on the screens about why these new buildings collapsed.  

Because everyone is looking for the culprit these days. 

Contractors are being arrested!

Mayors and councillors are being blamed for who gave permission for settlement in these problematic places, and as far as I know, there are even arrests among them.

Of course, bad intentions and social immorality are the main culprits, but we are all guilty at the same time.  

I think it is a mistake that we set our standards according to the buildings that will be minimally damaged in earthquakes and that we build buildings by putting our lives at risk, supposedly for the sake of economy.

If we are going to fix this, we need to make new arrangements in our standards with a social consensus. I have also written my ideas on the contracting institution before. We need to take this issue seriously now. I think we need to reconstruct the complete system from its supervision.

My intention is not to disrespect the efforts of my engineer friends while writing these, but in this earthquake, we have seen how much our people take into account the existing standards. It is not so easy to find a culprit in the current system, including engineers!

I wish these things could be done only by engineers. But unfortunately, the level of education of the construction workers is quite low and the result is obvious.

I can't find anything to say even to those who try to explain that we are doing good inspection by visiting the channels. As if all buildings can be adequately inspected, experts are trying to explain what should be done in good faith. But those who build with the greed for money and the pursuit of rent are not the people who can understand or apply the mentioned inspection methods. I am talking about people who are after all kinds of cunning to get out of the inspection.

In other words, I think that the experts are talking in vain.

Let's go back to what we started with.

If this is the case, why did the government find a distance of 500 metres sufficient?

Is there a technical explanation for this?

I don't know the reason, believe me, I don't know. 

If you ask me, the new settlements to be selected should not be built at a certain distance from the fault line, but in places where the ground is really solid. Because I tried to explain above that fault lines are not actually a straight line. 

If we continue to build buildings on the plain, on the grounds where there is a risk of raising the earthquake waves, just by saying that we have moved this far away, I think this would also be a mistake and this would be no different from the delusional mistakes made before. 

Such risky grounds should be completely avoided for new settlements. Buildings cannot be constructed on fault lines, but there is no rule that solid ground is at a certain distance from fault lines.

Let's leave the plains, let's do agriculture in the plains as we used to do in the past. Let's build settlements in places with solid ground.

As I have already written before, if these works are rushed, they will not work beyond election propaganda.

City planning is a very difficult branch. 

If these cities are to be revitalised as they used to be, decisions should be made by making large-scale plans, thinking very well and with the participation of all relevant stakeholders.

If necessary, very robust buildings should be built in the places where the existing cities are, but with good enough engineering studies. 

But as I said, these works require comprehensive studies. They cannot be rushed.

I hope that we will get rid of this populist point of view as soon as possible and we will be able to re-establish these ancient cities by thinking carefully and working on them in detail as it should be, and the region will continue to contribute to the country's economy as it used to.

Until that day, we will help the people of the region together and together we will overcome these difficult days. There is no other solution!

Last word: No matter how sturdy a building you build on or near fault lines, it will still be risky. 

Don't you realise that not 500 metres away, but hundreds of kilometres away, in Hatay, for example, no stone is left on stone? 

But we still haven't come to our senses, have we? 

What can I say, may God bless our end.

Love and respect to everyone from Moscow