Five people were killed when a seven-storey residential building partially collapsed in Istanbul's Maltepe district on the Asian side of the city, authorities said on Friday, October 9.
The building on Doğu Street in the Cevizli neighbourhood gave way at around 5:40 a.m. on Thursday, October 8, while many residents were asleep. Rescuers pulled 10 people out of the rubble alive. Two deaths were confirmed initially, and search teams later recovered three more bodies.
Building constructed in 1987
According to information from the Istanbul Governor's Office, the building was constructed in 1987 and consisted of a ground floor used as a workplace and six upper floors with 12 flats. Its first three floors collapsed, directly affecting four apartments.
Population registry records showed 33 people registered at the address, 14 of them in the four affected flats. Some residents were out of the city at the time.
The response involved the Disaster and Emergency Management Authority (AFAD), firefighters, police, medical teams and the National Medical Rescue Team (UMKE). The fire department alone deployed 56 vehicles and 175 personnel, while AFAD sent five vehicles and 25 staff. Search dogs were used to locate people under the debris.
Nearby buildings considered at risk were evacuated and roads around the site closed. To protect rescuers and prevent further collapse, authorities demolished the remaining structure from the top down. Search and rescue work has since been completed.
Prosecutors open investigation
The Istanbul Anatolian Chief Public Prosecutor's Office launched a judicial investigation and assigned a deputy chief prosecutor and a prosecutor to the case. The building's architect and site manager were detained. The cause of the collapse has not yet been determined.
The incident has renewed attention on the safety of Istanbul's ageing housing stock. Large numbers of buildings in the city of more than 15 million people predate the stricter construction codes introduced after the 1999 Marmara earthquake, and experts have long warned that many would be vulnerable in a major quake. The government and municipalities run urban transformation programmes aimed at replacing risky buildings, though progress has been uneven.
Sources
Photo: Makalesta2 / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
