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Mitigation Prior to the August 17th, 1999 Kocaeli Earthquake:

Earthquake Mitigation and Preparedness in Turkey were very much ignored prior to Kocaeli Earthquake. This is a general statement for most stakeholders that potentially have disaster responsibilities. I think that this is to some extent correlated with Turkish culture, which is ignorant rather than proactive. Lack of enough understanding of disaster management and tendency to be reactive on the government level were the main problems. The private sector companies were busy dealing only with their core businesses and they easily ignored what to do when a disaster would destroy their production facilities or headquarters. The media, as usual chose to be speculative, but not very educative. NGO’s and academic institutions were doing some useful jobs at that time but they also had some financial problems and difficulties in communicating their projects to the government and the public.

The Kocaeli Earthquake has been a sign for everyone to sit down, think and do something to minimize future losses before a new earthquake strikes. The 1999 earthquake has also proven that successful disaster management is only possible if agencies understand each other, establish empathy and cooperate beyond their usual responsibilities.

Even though it is hard to change from an organizational point of view, Turkey as a nation should have learned that it has to change. Especially Istanbul, which is unofficially defined as the next target of the earthquake, should pay more attention to earthquake mitigation and preparedness. The next part will mainly deal with what is currently being done in Istanbul and try to suggest alternative solutions to the problems faced and address them with respect to the responsibilities of stakeholders involved.
How did the August 17th, 1999 Kocaeli Earthquake change the Earthquake Mitigation Activities in Istanbul? What can be done to improve current situation? :

It can be said that the August 17th, 1999 Kocaeli Earthquake has triggered mitigation activities in Istanbul. It would be too strong to say that there were no mitigation and preparedness efforts in Istanbul prior to the Kocaeli Earthquake, but it can be surely said that it was not a high priority issue before everyone saw the devastation and disorganization during the Kocaeli Earthquake, which changed the situation ever since. Currently there are quite a few multi-organizational projects going on, or finished to prepare for a potential earthquake in Istanbul. The next paragraphs will focus on major stakeholders, their respective disaster roles, projects implemented and some suggestions.

The central and local governments in Turkey were among the most criticized organizations after the Kocaeli Earthquake. Their preparedness and responsiveness to the disaster was highly questioned. Currently there are some re-organization efforts in the central government and the Turkish Emergency Management General Directorate (TEMAD) has been established in June 2000. The agency is supposed to be a central authority that coordinates all phases of disaster activities at the national level. The agency has signed a cooperation protocol with FEMA, and organized the International Emergency Management Symposium in 2002 (http://www.emsturkey2002.org). The establishment is important because it is the first permanent central disaster management agency in Turkey, however it is early to judge their performance.

The re-organization itself is not meaningful unless the benefits are seen. Local governments in Istanbul also have important disaster roles. I think that the priorities of local governments in Istanbul should be assessment of earthquake risk and vulnerability in micro zone level, seismic retrofitting of buildings & infrastructure, development of earthquake master plan for Istanbul and communicating the risks to public and media. The governor of Istanbul in 1999 announced that their priorities in preparing for the earthquake in Istanbul would be the retrofitting of 700 schools and 10,000 public buildings and he explicitly stated that the retrofitting of privately owned buildings is very costly and it should be done by individuals, rather than by the government. However he suggested the central government to provide low interest loans for people who are taking these mitigation measures (http://www.yapiworld.com/deprem/tbmm_deprem_raporu.htm ). Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality is working in cooperation with Japan International Cooperation Agency about a seismic vulnerability and micro-zoning project. The project involves integration of GIS to build a database for future use in disasters and simulating vulnerability and estimating damage for different earthquake scenarios. The mayor of Istanbul has announced that their priorities would be protecting critical infrastructure, such as utility lines, first responder facilities, bridges. Especially the Bogazici and Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridges that connect Asian and European part of Istanbul have a big logistical importance. The Metropolitan Municipality has also subcontracted a peer group of experts from Bogazici, ITU, ODTU, and Yildiz universities to prepare an earthquake master plan for Istanbul (http://www.ibb.gov.tr ). This is a good example of inter-organizational cooperation. Some district municipalities in Istanbul are forming their own emergency response teams from volunteers. They are providing training to interested citizens in cooperation with the ‘Community Impact Project’ led by Bogazici University Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute (http://www.kadikoy-bld.gov.tr/ ). These are all promising activities for Istanbul, however I think that there is still a lot more to do. The central government should be more active in supporting third parties both financially and strategically. Leadership of government is also essential to establish appropriate coordination.

Another important stakeholder for effective earthquake mitigation is the public. Prior to the Kocaeli Earthquake, the role of the public has been doing nothing until getting hit by the disaster and then waiting for someone (i.e. government) to come and help them whenever the disaster strikes. The Kocaeli Earthquake showed that this type of behavior is not very valid and meaningful anymore. Family level Mitigation and Preparedness is a very important success factor for successful disaster management. In my opinion the role of the public in disaster management should be transforming its disaster sensitivity to awareness and be proactive. By family level mitigation we mean all actions that can be taken at home to reduce potential earthquake damage. Most family mitigation activities are not costly and they are easy to implement. However since the public is not used to take these measures, it will take a long time until each family will spend adequate time to detect the potential dangers inside the house and prevent them, before they hurt them. The family mitigation activities are as simple as fastening shelves securely to walls, bracing overhead light fixtures, identifying safe places in each room and in the entire house (FEMA Earthquakes Fact Sheet, September 1993). Especially locating safe places in the house is a very important and effective method for lifesaving in an earthquake. The Kocaeli Earthquake has proven that almost all houses (even the ones that collapsed like a pancake) have safer parts, where one can survive even if the house collapses down. Since Turkish government seems to expect retrofitting of private buildings done by their owners, this is seems to be another responsibility of house owners. However public, media and NGO’s may come together and cooperate to force the government to provide more support for retrofitting of individual buildings. Preparing a family earthquake plan is another important responsibility of the public to reduce panic and maximize family coordination in case of an earthquake.

The media is also an important component in successful disaster mitigation. However motivating the media to act as an efficient communication channel in disaster mitigation is a hard and complicated job. From a pure disaster management point of view, the role of media for crisis management would be to act as a catalyst to sustain public awareness against disasters, with constant propaganda and education. In the ideal case media should also act as an objective bridge between government and public, by which it is meant that media should directly report the news instead of adding its own comments and tendencies. However this is not very applicable in real life, since media has its own reasons for its existence. A major problem with Turkish media is that it is highly magazine oriented. But I still think that media can be a very powerful instrument to reach out to people and educate them. The improvement of relations between media and NGO’s is an important goal, which can improve public attention to NGO’s and at the same time provide education for citizens, where the content of the education is prepared by NGO’s and transmitted by the media. Similar projects between media and the private sector for other campaigns have already been implemented and good results are obtained. I think that media should actively support the importance of disaster mitigation and preparedness and force the public and the government to do something about it. And to show its active involvement in this issue, media should volunteer and show leadership for disaster awareness.

The private sector has suffered most in economic terms during the Kocaeli Earthquake. Kocaeli was the heart of Turkish industry and most of the companies got caught very unprepared by the earthquake and they have lost their production facilities, offices, equipment, as well as their employees. The term ‘Contingency Planning’ was not very popular in the private sector prior to the earthquake. The impacts of the earthquake forced the private sector to double-check its disaster preparedness. I think that there are three important priorities to improve the contribution of private sector to disaster preparedness. The biggest problem that the industry around Istanbul and Kocaeli faces is inadequate land use planning. Even though land use planning is a responsibility of the government, the current picture of the geographical distribution of industries around Turkey shows that the government did not pay enough attention to land use planning. Kocaeli and Istanbul, which host the heart of Turkish industry, are both very seismo active cities. This fact should force the private sector to be more careful while choosing a location for their facilities. This is especially important for the chemical industry, and industries that involve HAZMAT, because earthquakes that damage these industries trigger new disasters such as the fire and oil spill in the TUPRAS refinery after the Kocaeli Earthquake. Another priority is the establishment of pre-arrangements between the government and the private sector. The public sector owns vehicles and tools that can be very useful to remove debris during an earthquake response. Pre-arranging them before the earthquake hits, is an important task that enables better planning of resource allocation. The third priority is company level contingency planning and disaster preparedness. It includes a large variety of components like protection of core processes and tools, financial preparedness, scenario planning, establishment of response teams. However the Turkish private sector needs training in these issues. Some NGO’s and academic units have the capability of providing training in this area. Cooperation between these agencies can help private sector to improve its disaster preparedness capacity and provide funding for NGO’s and academic institutions.

The NGO’s are also one of the essential stakeholders for successful disaster mitigation and preparedness. The performance of NGO’s during the Kocaeli Earthquake was appreciated even though there were some coordination problems. This was very important for the development of NGO culture in Turkey. More than 70 Turkish NGO’s and 24 SAR Teams participated in the response to the earthquake. After the earthquake the public attention to NGO’s has increased, and especially the SAR teams received lots of membership applications. Some of them even received grants or donations because of their successful activities during the disaster. Now the response is over and Turkish NGO’s are preparing for the next disaster. The preparations focus on a potential earthquake in Istanbul. There are several mitigation and preparedness projects going on. In general the projects are about public education for disaster preparedness and technical training for SAR. One important project is being implemented in the coordination of Kandilli Earthquake Research Center with several supporting agencies such as USAID, UNDP, American Friends Service Committee and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (http://www.iahep.org). The goal of this a multi-institutional project is to educate people in local level, create disaster awareness and introduce possible ways to reduce earthquake losses. The project is also designed to provide higher-level training for interested citizens, which can serve as trainers later on. Another project is implemented by ‘Civil Coordination Against Disasters’ (http://www.sivilkoordinasyon.org/).

The project is also a local level education project, however its scope is an all hazards spectrum rather than just the earthquake. On the other hand SAR groups are also preparing for future disasters. Two well-known SAR groups in Turkey; AKUT (http://www.akut.org.tr/) and AKA (http://www.aka-arama.org/) report in their websites that they are still taking applications from volunteers that want to join their teams, and that they are continuously implementing their training activities. These are all very promising activities toward a civil initiative in Turkey; however a lot more should be done. NGO’s should spend more in advertising and marketing activities to take full advantage of the positive public opinion towards them in order to stabilize their financial situation.

Academic institutions, such as universities and research centers are also an essential component of successful disaster management. The main role of these institutions is to provide academic expertise, technical knowledge and infrastructure for crisis, disaster and risk management projects. The Kocaeli Earthquake is a turning point for academic institutions because it affected the research areas of these units drastically. Some universities established multi-disciplinary research centers to perform research in the area of disaster management. Bogazici University Center for Disaster Management CENDIM (http://www.cendim.boun.edu.tr) is one of these new centers. It has been established in January 2001 after a strategic partnership with the George Washington University-Institute of Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management (ICDRM). Short after its establishment the center produced important projects and is still working in independent and government funded projects. A team composed of experts from different universities prepares the earthquake master plan for Istanbul. Establishment of this cooperation between the government and academic units is very important, because in the past government projects and academic projects rarely got implemented in cooperation. This is a promising change and it should be further improved. ODTU Disaster Management Implementation and Research Center (http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwdmc/) is another important academic unit in the field. Successful utilization of academic units in disaster management is highly dependent on how much the government can support them, however in my opinion the government has to strengthen its relationships with these institutions because it needs their expertise and knowledge.

Conclusions:

The research that has been conducted shows that the August 17th, 1999 Kocaeli Earthquake has changed the behavior of some important disaster stakeholders. This is very promising, but there are still a lot of gaps that should be filled. There are several projects where inter-organizational cooperation is necessary to minimize lack of coordination and maintain the synergy. Sustaining public awareness against disasters is a hard task, which involves contribution of several stakeholders. Turkish NGO’s are taking important steps to achieve this goal. Central government seems to be slow in completing its organization, even though its support will be a key success factor for disaster management. The importance of academic units has been obvious with the projects and research they conduct in the area. Private sector is willing to prepare for the next disaster but they need encouragement from the government and knowledge or training from academic world or experienced NGO’s. Public, which is the heart of cost effective mitigation and preparedness is open to do something about it but it will take a long time until education and training will reach each individual. However the progress is running and it will hopefully help Istanbul citizens to prepare better for the next earthquake.

References:
1-    ABCD Basic Disaster Awareness Handbook, Bogazici University Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Center, 2002
2-    An Integrated Approach to Natural Hazard Mitigation, FEMA, 1995
3-    Avoiding Earthquake Damage: A Checklist for Homeowners, FEMA
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8-    Influence of the 17 August 1999 Izmit Earthquake to Seismic Hazards in Istanbul; Parsons, Barka, Toda, Stein, Dieterich; 2000
9-    Post-Disaster Hazard Mitigation Planning Guidance for State and Local Governments, FEMA, September 1990
10-    Report on Costs and Benefits of Natural Hazard Mitigation, FEMA, March 1997
11-    The August 17 Kocaeli and November 12 Duzce Earthquakes in Turkey, Sahin & Tari, December 1999
12-    Urban Risk Management for Natural Disasters: A Research Planning Workshop, Summary of Research and Implementation Needs; Bogazici University Center for Disaster Management, Columbia University Center for Hazards and Risk Research, 2001
13-    AKUT Search and Rescue Organization, http://www.akut.org.tr
14-    Bogazici University Center for Disaster Management CENDIM, http://www.cendim.boun.edu.tr
15-    Civic Coordination Against Disasters NGO, http://www.sivilkoordinasyon.org/
16-    Community Impact Project Website, http://www.iahep.org/
17-    Governorship of Istanbul, http://www.istanbul.gov.tr
18-    International Emergency Management Symposium 2002 organized by Turkish Emergency Management General Directorate, http://www.emsturkey2002.org
19-    Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, http://www.ibb.gov.tr/
20-    Istanbul: A Brief Seismic History, http://www.kanyak.com/seismic.html
21-    Kadikoy Municipality Website, http://www.kadikoy-bld.gov.tr/
22-    METU Disaster Management Implementation and Research Center, http://www.metu.edu.tr/home/wwwdmc/
23-    Projects Everyone Should Do, http://www.eqe.com/publications/homeprep/projects.htm
24-    Report of the Parliament Earthquake Research Commission, 1999 http://www.yapiworld.com/deprem/tbmm_deprem_raporu.htm
25-    Search and Rescue Research Organization, http://www.aka-arama.org/
26-    Tactical Rapid Civil Rescue Team Website, http://www.ratstr.org/cdarticles/cdintrk.html
27-    Turkish Prime Ministry Project Implementation Unit, http://www.pub.gov.tr/