Turkey, Israel and the Earthquake: A Public Service Announcement
It has been widely reported that Turkey turned down Israeli offers of assistance in rescuing earthquake victims. This has been understood as a sign of Turkey's sick anti-Israeli animus. Now, I'll be the first to deplore Turkish pathology when it comes to seismic risk mitigation, but this isn't worth anyone's energy. The government has politely turned down all foreign offers of aid, for now, and this may even be the right decision. This is a difficult part of Turkey to reach; attempting to coordinate some 50 foreign aid teams might, as Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç said, be "a mess."
The extent of the damage is still unclear from the reports coming in thus far. Turkey does, I think, have sufficient equipment, trained personnel, and supplies to handle a disaster of this scale. The challenge is assessment and coordination. The Chilean government also initially rejected offers of aid, although when the damage was revealed to be greater than first thought, they accepted it, so this kind of response is not that unusual. Iran and Azerbaijan apparently just sent teams without asking; they weren't specially invited. The Spanish team, I understand, gave up after waiting for permission at the airport.
It was probably a mistake to decline the Israeli offer, given Israel's experience of in working in Turkey; the Israelis are also able to set up extremely advanced field hospitals, quickly, as they did in Haiti. But it's not necessarily a pathological response to turn it down, nor an expression of ravening Jew-hatred. It depends what the requirements really are, and only the people on the ground are in a position to say. I suspect the news will get worse in the next few days, but of course I pray it won't. If it does, and if they think they need foreign help, I'm sure they'll ask.
However, for those of you in Israel, let me take this opportunity to remind you that today would be a great opportunity to review your own standards of seismic safety. Many of you felt that jolt in Tel Aviv, which should tell you something: You're in a seismically active zone. Everyone there should take reasonable seismic risk mitigations steps, such a securing heavy items to walls and making sure you have in your home a two-week supply of food, water and medication, flashlight, batteries and radios, etc. You should know what to do in an earthquake (duck, cover and hold on), and if you're unsure about the soundness of the building you like in, have it inspected.
Earthquakes don't kill people, buildings do. They kill most often in countries where the construction sector is "anomalously corrupt." If you look at the graph in this article in Nature by Nicholas Ambaseys and Roger Bilham, you'll see that the relationship between living in a country with a great deal of corruption in the construction sector and dying in an earthquake is easy to establish. Israel's construction sector is quite dirty. It's ahead of Turkey, but well behind the countries where buildings rarely collapse.
So, spend the energy you'd spend helping Turkey or marveling at its pathology on making sure you're ready for an earthquake closer to home. When I visited after the Carmel fire, I was appalled to see how much of the damage could have been prevented by following common sense rules for preventing fires from spreading.
בבקשה.
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Aug '11
Re: Turkey, Israel and the Earthquake: A Public Service Announcement
Israel is living on borrowed time. One of these days a serious earthquake is gonna hit us and you will be looking at 1000s of deaths. The unfortunate fact is that nobody does anything in this country unless it is a response to a disaster that has already happened (see the Carmel Forest Fire, Maccabiah Bridge, "Versailles" Hall, etc. etc.)
May '10
Re: Turkey, Israel and the Earthquake: A Public Service Announcement
Better link for the "Nature" report for what it's worth.
Good post, Claire. I, too, had thought that Turkey's rejection was for Israel only, not all foreign aid. That's the way it was reported. Thanks (as usual) for setting us straight.
Mar '11
Re: Turkey, Israel and the Earthquake: A Public Service Announcement
Great post, Claire, thank you.
You're quite right about the state of construction in Israel, at least with respect to residential apartment buildings and the older commercial buildings. I doubt very much that the building I live in (built in the early 70s) would withstand a serious quake.
Of course the problem is that this danger, being entirely inescapable for most of us of limited means, gets simply tossed in with all the other life-threatening existential risks we have to just live with here. I can't afford to live in a new building, but then again I can't afford to buy a house with a proper bomb shelter, either. All that's left to do (if one is to retain one's mental and emotional health) is to compartmentalize, and pray it turns out all right in the end.
Dec '10
Re: Turkey, Israel and the Earthquake: A Public Service Announcement
Turkey was wrong to reject the offer of Israeli help. Beyond field hospitals, Israel has some of the world's greatest expertise and experience in locating victims trapped in rubble. That expertise is of far greater value in the minutes and hours after the temblor than field hospital resources, which the Turks no doubt can furnish on their own.
Dec '10
Re: Turkey, Israel and the Earthquake: A Public Service Announcement
This could have happened twenty-four hours ago, couldn't it?
[Israeli] Defense minister [Ehud Barak] instructs officials to fly special equipment to Turkey after Turkish authorities request assistance from Israel; death toll from 7.2-magnitude earthquake rise to 432 as rescue efforts continue.
Dec '10
Re: Turkey, Israel and the Earthquake: A Public Service Announcement
This could have happened twenty-four hours ago, couldn't it?
[Israeli] Defense minister [Ehud Barak] instructs officials to fly special equipment to Turkey after Turkish authorities request assistance from Israel; death toll from 7.2-magnitude earthquake rise to 432 as rescue efforts continue.
Re: Turkey, Israel and the Earthquake: A Public Service Announcement
They've requested aid from Israel now. My strong guess is that the initial "We don't need aid" reaction was colored by shock and denial, to which governments are as prone as people.
Re: Turkey, Israel and the Earthquake: A Public Service Announcement
Stuart Creque: This could have happened twenty-four hours ago, couldn't it? · Oct 25 at 11:15am
[Israeli] Defense minister [Ehud Barak] instructs officials to fly special equipment to Turkey after Turkish authorities request assistance from Israel; death toll from 7.2-magnitude earthquake rise to 432 as rescue efforts continue.
It could have. But the main ground for fury about this situation isn't the lack of appropriate response now--it's the lack of planning before, and especially the failure to enforce the building codes. The response has actually been a bit better than I would have anticipated. Better than in '99.
Dec '10
Re: Turkey, Israel and the Earthquake: A Public Service Announcement
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
It could have. But the main ground for fury about this situation isn't the lack of appropriate response now--it's the lack of planning before, and especially the failure to enforce the building codes. The response has actually been a bit better than I would have anticipated. Better than in '99.
The problem with building codes is that they make buildings more expensive, which is an immediate issue for property owners and renters, even as they make the buildings safer in the event of disasters. Human nature being what it is, everyone thinks they have a good deal when they can pay a relatively small bribe to avoid complying with building codes and thus can get a building up at lower cost and achieve higher occupancy with lower rents. Only on occasion do they get a reminder of why compliance is a good investment.
The worst is when builders allege that they are complying with building codes when in fact they are using substandard materials and methods and pocketing the difference. The building owners and renters pay for what they think is safe, and they pay the price for others' corruption.
Apr '11
Re: Turkey, Israel and the Earthquake: A Public Service Announcement
The World Series earthquake in 1989 was just a wiggler for those of us 90 miles away in Sacramento. When I got home that night (I had stopped at a friend's house, intending to watch the game) doors were ajar and some books had spilled off my floor-to-ceiling free-standing bookshelves. But it wasn't until years later, reading one of Cathy Seipp's NRO columns, where she talked about the L.A. police chief being pinned to his bed for several hours by a falling bookshelf, that it occurred to me that it would be a good idea to wire the bookshelves to some wall anchors.
"That's good advice," as Joseph says to Paul in We're No Angels.