Over 232,000 buildings damaged or fit for demolition after Türkiye quakes

More than 232,000 buildings have been severely damaged or should be demolished immediately in southern Türkiye after the powerful earthquakes that struck the region on February 6, the country's environment minister has said.

"We have determined that 232,632 buildings, including 651,416 independent sections, were severely damaged or will be immediately demolished," Murat Kurum said at a meeting in the southeastern Malatya province on Tuesday.

Kurum said authorities examined more than 1.7 million buildings composed of over 5.7 million independent sections in the quake-hit provinces.

The damage assessment was completed in Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras, Adiyaman, Osmaniye, and Kilis provinces, he added.

"We started the process of constructing disaster houses as part of the biggest disaster housing construction campaign in the history of the Turkish Republic ... We will build a total of 66,230 houses and 21,549 village houses in Malatya," he said.

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More than 300,000 homes to be built

In the light of science, the authorities will designate the right place with experts and local governments and start the construction process, he added.

The construction of 27,849 houses in the region will start by March 9, Kurum said, adding, they will commence the construction of 309,000 houses in all quake-hit provinces in the next two months.

More than 46,100 people have been killed in the back-to-back earthquakes that struck southern and southeastern Türkiye last month. Nearly 6,000 people died in the neighbouring Syria.

The magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 quakes, centered in Kahramanmaras, rocked 10 other provinces — Hatay, Gaziantep, Adiyaman, Malatya, Adana, Diyarbakir, Kilis, Osmaniye, Sanliurfa, and Elazig.

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