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The 7.4 earthquake hitting southeastern Türkiye at 4:17 AM hit Hatay drastically. Collapsing buildings, rupturing highways and splitting Hatay's airport in half.
Flights were immediately halted after the earthquake severely damaged the airport.
"They did not take our warnings into account"
The TMMOB, the union of chambers of engineers and architects, warned about the airport in the past.
Tezcan Karakuş Candan, the chairperson of the Ankara branch of the Chamber of Architects, and affiliated with TMMOB told bianet that many warnings were made to the authorities before the airport was built. Indicating that the airport should not be constructed there as its location is on a fault line.
"Of course, the priority now is to save lives. However, we also have to criticize. We warned many times before the airport in Hatay was constructed. 'There is a fault line, you should not build an airport here,' we said. But they did not take our warnings into account. Now the photographs of the runway arrived. The runway is split into pieces," Candan stated.
Aid and rescue flights are currently prevented from landing at the airport.
Collapsed buildings
There are also collapsed buildings in the city.
There were thousands of buildings that needed to be reinforced, according to Özçelik, the chairperson of the Hatay branch of the chamber. Something they warned about many times but not taken into account.
Özçelik said, "We always warned and told the authorities that priority should be given to damaged buildings and that these buildings should be reinforced. However, the resources were used for mega projects instead. The reason there is such a big tragedy today is this attitude." (EMK/PE/WM)