By Eddie Pipkin
Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay
Among the many heart-wrenching narratives from the recent catastrophic earthquake that impacted Turkey and Syria, none was more tragic than the realization that one of the principal reasons so many structures collapsed was that earthquake safety building codes had been willfully subverted. Countless thousands of lives were sacrificed due to greed and criminal neglect. The stringent construction rules, modified following a previous seismic tragedy, had been strengthened to guard against exactly the devastating outcome that played out on February 6th. No protective guidelines for any jurisdiction or community are worth the paper on which they are printed, no matter how thoughtfully crafted, if they are ignored.
The news contained numerous accounts of the increased mortality caused by substandard construction, and the government has already responded by arresting a score of builders they claim have broken the law by undermining earthquake-proof building standards (even though