A five-story apartment building in Istanbul’s Kucukcekmece district collapsed on Sunday morning, resulting in one death and eight injuries.
This incident has reignited concerns about the structural integrity of buildings in an earthquake-prone city.
Firefighters and rescue teams swiftly responded, sifting through the rubble by hand to extract survivors.
Istanbul Governor Davut Gul reported that seven people were initially rescued from the debris, two of whom sustained serious injuries. Later, an additional injured person was found and a body was recovered.
The 36-year-old building, which collapsed at 8:40 a.m. (0540 GMT), was partially occupied, with residences on the top two floors and businesses on the lower levels.
Authorities confirmed that there was no immediate evidence of an explosion or seismic activity as the cause of the collapse.
Surveillance footage from a nearby street showed bystanders narrowly escaping the falling debris.
Urbanization Minister Mehmet Ozhaseki revealed that the building had been constructed without adherence to safety standards, and illegal additional stories had been added.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya stated that two individuals, the building owner and a ground-floor restaurant owner, have been detained.
The deceased was identified as a Turkmenistan national, along with several other residents.
This tragic event comes in the wake of last year’s devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake in southern Turkey and Syria, which claimed over 59,000 lives and exposed significant shortcomings in building regulation enforcement.
Istanbul, home to 16 million people, is situated near the North Anatolian Fault. The city has a history of seismic activity, including a 1999 earthquake that killed at least 18,000 people.
Current assessments indicate that nearly 200,000 buildings housing 3 million people urgently require structural improvements.
