Turkey faces unrealistic task of recycling concrete waste after earthquake
2023.03.02 11:48
Turkey faces unrealistic task of recycling concrete waste after earthquake
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – Turkey is faced with the daunting task of disposing of hundreds of millions of tons of rubble, some of which may be harmful, following the deadliest earthquake in its modern history.
According to Turkish authorities, the Feb. 6 earthquake and subsequent earthquakes caused at least 156,000 buildings to either completely collapse or be damaged to the point where they need to be demolished. Whole cities were reduced to shattered steel and concrete.
If stacked to a height of one meter, the resulting 116-210 million tons of rubble, according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), would cover an area of 100 square kilometers (40 square miles). That is roughly comparable to Barcelona’s size.
Although experts cautioned that safety should take precedence over speed, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to rebuild homes within a year in anticipation of an election on May 14.
Tenders and contracts for some projects had already been completed, according to an official, and safety would not be compromised.
In many cities, thousands of trucks and excavators that dig through the mountains of concrete have taken the place of rescue teams. According to workers in the Hatay province city of Antakya, clearing out one building’s rubble can take several days.
UNDP Resident Representative Louisa Vinton stated in a statement, “The scope of the challenge is almost beyond comprehension.” According to the UNDP, the disaster produced at least ten times as much debris as the 1999 major earthquake in Turkey.
Concerns about contamination arise as a result of the fact that much of the debris that has been removed so far has been stored in temporary dumps nearby. According to a number of experts, Reuters, older building materials may contain asbestos, a fiber that is banned in many countries, including Turkey, and can cause cancer.
In a tweet, Deputy Environment Minister Mehmet Emin Birpinar stated that dust suppression systems were being utilized to stop the spread of hazardous substances like asbestos.
In cities like Antakya and Osmaniye, journalists from Reuters saw water trucks hosing down debris as it was lifted into trucks, but in many other cases, no such measures were in place. Birpinar could not be reached for comment right away.
According to three direct workers in rubble removal in the southern city of Antakya, proximity and convenience are the primary considerations when selecting dump sites.
However, the Chairman of the Chamber of Environmental Engineers, Ahmet Kahraman, stated that geological and environmental experts needed to conduct a “meticulous study” of the locations where debris is stored.
Environmental activists and politicians in opposition warn that improper rubble removal could result in an ecological catastrophe. Reuters went to at least one location, which was a wooded area.
Gokhan Gunaydin, a member of the opposition CHP party, stated, “Dumping rubble in the city, olive groves, and stream beds without decomposing and recycling it causes new environmental disasters.”
On Twitter last Friday, Birpinar stated that the locations chosen for the disposal of debris in Hatay were far from agricultural and residential areas, wetlands, and protected areas.
He also said that 19 temporary locations had been found in Hatay so far. They covered a total area the size of 200 football fields and moved 150,000 cubic meters of debris per day.
This week, hundreds of demolition trucks entered the hills east of Antakya to unload the debris at locations close to olive groves and lush greenery.
Altan Arslan, a 51-year-old owner of a pavement brick and cement block factory, claimed that he had given the government his land to use as a rubble storage facility following the earthquake.
He stated that the debris had developed into a massive mound due to the daily arrival of thousands of trucks. After that, bulldozers flattened the waste and pushed it toward a cliff’s edge, sending some of it into the valley and making huge dust clouds.
“We might require a couple more fields like this on the grounds that the obliteration is enormous,” Arslan said, as earthmovers disposed of broken concrete close to heaps of new concrete blocks in his yard.
He added that locals were far too traumatized immediately following the earthquake to worry about where the debris was being dumped.
Antakya was built with the help of his factory, but the land on which it stood was now the city’s graveyard.
“We were very happy when we built this city, but seeing it fall in such a way…” He wept and placed his hand on his face.
