Earthquakes that hit Turkey on Monday have left more than 24,000 dead and millions more displaced and in need of supplies. While many search the rubble, a rising tension of blame falls upon the buildings’ contractors.
In Turkey, some 6,500 main buildings collapsed and many more side buildings were damaged, per Reuters.
These buildings are thought to have been poorly made despite laws passed after devastation hit from an earthquake in 1999, per CNN.
“The regulations have certainly been improved … but it’s really a matter of enforcing those regulations,” said Sinan Ulgen, a Turkish former diplomat currently chairing the Istanbul-based Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy, per CNN. “And there, Turkey really needs to upgrade its game.”
Across 10 providences, “Earthquake Crimes Investigation Units” are being set up by Turkish officials to detain contractors, per The New York Times. Citizens are outraged.
“The concrete is like sand,” said one man who declined to give his name to The New York Times, standing near a newly build luxury apartment complex, now in shambles. “It was built too quickly.”
Close to 100 contractors are now detained, with some being intercepted and detained on their way out of the country, per The New York Times.
About a million are thought to be homeless in Turkey as temperatures drop, making supplies such as warm food that much more necessary, reported The New York Times.
“Look at us. I don’t have any shoes. I don’t have any water to wash my hands. We have nothing,” one woman in Adiyaman, Turkey told CBS News. “There are more dead people here than alive. This city is a cemetery.”