Earthquakes treated from different perspectives
Faculty of Law and Faculty of Engineering in cooperation with Cyprus International University (CIU) held an event entitled “An Overview of Earthquakes from Legal and Technical standpoint.”
The event was held at the CIU Çevik Uraz Center Conference Hall where the experts handled the earthquake phenomenon from a multidisciplinary approach.
Speaking at the opening of the event, Prof. Dr. Hasan Tunç, Dean of the CIU Faculty of Law, stated that more than 50 thousand people lost their lives and more than 107 thousand people were injured in the February 6th earthquake, and expressed his sadness over the incident.
Tunç reminded that earthquakes cause faults in the earth's crust which cannot be prevented with today's technologies, and added, "It is not possible for us to prevent the earthquake. However, it is possible to prevent the natural event from becoming a disaster with the measures to be taken in the light of science.”
Stating that this event is an important opportunity to address the responsibilities and problems that have arisen, Tunç said, "Today, our panelists from the technical branch will talk about the problems, while our friends from the legal profession will examine the structures related to the legal regulations that need to be taken."
CIU Faculty of Engineering Dean Prof. Dr. Serkan Abbasoğlu, on the other hand, said in his speech that the earthquake in question was one of the most serious processes that the TRNC went through and said, "We have suffered painful losses both on our island and in Turkey. The fact that many of our casualties specifically on the island were children affected us tremendously. On this occasion, once again, I wish God's mercy on all our losses, especially our 'Champion Angels', and patience and condolences to their loved ones."
Abbasoğlu stated that everyone should derive the necessary lessons from these earthquakes, and added, “This is a natural disaster. However, it was once seen again that it was unnatural causes that killed. Noting that buildings are very important at this point, Abbasoğlu said, “There are points that cannot be avoided. Especially today we need to talk about the ground soil. However, it has been clearly understood that it is possible to reduce losses with the precautions to be taken and rapid intervention.
The balance sheet in the earthquake zone is getting heavy as we can see that 390,000 buildings have collapsed or are about to be demolished. Stating that they looked at the average values of these buildings and came up with 30 billion dollars for the buildings only, Abbasoğlu said, “We calculated that the cost of reinforcement could have been approximately 6 billion dollars. This implies by investing only 6 million dollars, it could have been possible to avoid the catastrophic results of this disaster with less casualties and less damage.”
Emphasizing that one of the duties of the university is to serve the society, Abbasoğlu stated that today's event was organized with this philosophy and that the main purpose was to keep the process on the agenda live and contribute to the measures to be taken.
The opening speeches were followed by presentations, and these were respectively "Building Inspection", "Criminal and Legal Responsibility of the Owner and Contractor", and "Legal Evaluations of Earthquakes."