One third of the roads within the city will be blocked in such an event: report ANKARA: A new study has said that major Turkish cities are poorly prepared a powerful quake — which experts believe is likely to occur in the coming decades. This follows the 7.0-magnitude earthquake off Turkey’s western coast on Friday afternoon that killed 114 in western city of Izmir and injured 1,035 people. According to research carried out by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, a 7.5 magnitude earthquake in Istanbul would demolish or seriously damage around 48,000 buildings in the city, while another 194,000 buildings will be moderately damaged. The study, which was prepared by Istanbul Planning Agency, claimed that one third of the roads within the city will be blocked in such an event, and there would be the threat of a tsunami, as well. The Princes’ Islands, a popular tourist destination just south of the city in the Sea of Marmara, are said to be at high risk from waves that could be more than 12 meters high. The total damage caused by a major earthquake could reach 120 billion Turkish liras ($14.27 billion) in Istanbul alone. The level of preparedness of Istanbul is of key importance as the city is crossed by several fault lines and has suffered many quakes in the past. Despite the fresh memories of a 7.6-magnitude quake in the Marmara region, to the south of Istanbul, that killed more than 17,000 people, experts fear the authorities have not been taking the necessary precautions. “Although earthquakes are natural disasters, the loss of life and the collapse of houses do not derive from natural causes, but are man-made, preventable difficulties. Although it is impossible to prevent the earthquakes, it is possible to minimize the losses,” the report said. The ruling government has been harshly criticized for not disclosing where the earthquake taxes it has raised have been spent on. The Turkish presidency said 147.2 billion liras have been collected in the 17 years since the massive quake in 1999. Ali Babacan, Turkey’s former economy tsar and founder of the breakaway Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), suggested that the government should earmark the country’s resources for constructing earthquake-resistant buildings, instead of spending them on profit-seeking projects such as the controversial 45-km-long Istanbul Canal between the Black Sea and the Marmara Sea. Geologists and earthquake experts even fear that the canal could trigger earth movements, as 1-1.5 billion cubic meters of material will be excavated and used to form small islands in the Marmara Sea. Burhanettin Bulut, a lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People"s Party (CHP), was among a team of politicians that conducted a field visit to Izmir just after the earthquake. “This earthquake showed us that private contractors used cheap and inadequate materials for these buildings. However, it is the duty of the state to enforce building codes and monitor all stages of their construction to monitor the earthquake-resiliency,” he told Arab News. Bulut spoke to many earthquake victims and urged the authorities to act. “We shouldn’t ignore the lives of our own citizens. The majority of the buildings that collapsed in Izmir benefited from the controversial zoning amnesty which was issued by the government ahead of the general election in 2018. Rather than focusing on rent-seeking activities in the major cities, there is an urgent need for a strict control over the construction sector,” he said. With that zoning amnesty, about ten million illegally constructed buildings throughout the country gained approval. Izmir topped the list for the number of such buildings. In the recent tremor 20 buildings in Izmir collapsed and became “graveyards” for their unlucky residents. The Turkish parliament approved the formation of an investigation committee on earthquake measures on Nov 3 – a motion that had long been requested by the opposition parties. “From now on, the government should work with the experts on this issue because earthquake victims that I talked to were disillusioned. Everybody should learn serious lessons from this quake and take necessary precautions to protect human lives,” Bulut said. Years ago, Ali Agaoglu, a famous figure in the construction business in Turkey and architect of dozens of luxury residential zones in Istanbul, described how poor-quality materials, including salty sea sand and scrap iron, were routinely used in the buildings his company constructed in the past. “The buildings will collapse like paper in an eventual big earthquake in Istanbul,” he once said in a televised interview.