Tourist hotels and hotspots in Turkey are still at risk of collapsing in catastrophic earthquakes, a year on from the deadly quakes that killed more than 50,000 people.
i has travelled to southern Turkey, along the border with Syria, to report on the aftermath of the 2023 earthquakes that razed parts of the country to the ground.
While rebuilding and retrofitting efforts are under way, experts have warned that both old and new hotels in tourist hotspots including Istanbul are among the buildings still at risk from catastrophic quakes.
David Alexander, Professor of Emergency Planning and Management at UCL, has spent time assessing structures in earthquake-prone countries including Turkey and said he has not “seen any evidence that hotels are necessarily better built than other structures” in the country.
“Even smaller earthquakes, of which there are a number, have caused spectacular building collapses in Turkey, despite the fact that we’ve known for a very, very long time how to…
