Earthquake Destroys Runway of Hatay Airport

Hatay was severely impacted by the 7.4 earthquake that struck southern Turkey at 4:17 AM. buildings collapsing, roads rupturing, and the airport at Hatay being split in half.

Following the airport's severe damage from the earthquake, flights were immediately suspended.

The union of chambers of engineers and architects, or TMMOB, has already issued warnings regarding the airport.

Many warnings were given to the authorities before to the airport's construction, according to Tezcan Karakuş Candan, the chairwoman of the Ankara chapter of the Chamber of Architects and a member of TMMOB, who spoke to bianet. stating that due to the airport's proximity to a fault line, it should not be built there.

"Of course, the priority now is to save lives. However, we also have to criticize. We warned many times before the airport in Hatay was constructed. 'There is a fault line, you should not build an airport here,' we said. But they did not take our warnings into account. Now the photographs of the runway arrived. The runway is split into pieces," Candan stated.

Aid and rescue flights are currently prevented from landing at the airport.

There were thousands of buildings that needed to be reinforced, according to Özçelik, the chairperson of the Hatay branch of the chamber. Something they warned about many times but not taken into account.

Özçelik said, "We always warned and told the authorities that priority should be given to damaged buildings and that these buildings should be reinforced. However, the resources were used for mega projects instead. The reason there is such a big tragedy today is this attitude."