'Scientific and fast': Türkiye’s earthquake reconstruction project begins

The Turkish government has announced its road map for the revival and reconstruction process after the devastating earthquakes that hit southern Türkiye on February 6, affecting over 13 million people. 

On February 21, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that within one year all quake-hit villages and cities will be revived, with a total of200,000 permanent houses to be built for the affected-populations of 11 provinces including Adana, Adiyaman, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep, Hatay, Kahramanmaras, Kilis, Malatya, Osmaniye, Sanliurfa, and Elazig.

The Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Minister Murat Kurum also shared a road map for the revival process of the quake-affected region.

According to the plan which is based on "scientific, fast and strong principles", all the measures will be taken to ensure new constructions are disaster-proof. The land will be examined for all reasons such as morphological, geological, geophysical, geotechnical, hydrogeological, and seismotectonic. 

READ MORE: Grief from Türkiye quakes should help transform global disaster response

The related authorities will continue to measure the earthquake resistance of the new residential zone by considering micro-zoning and geological studies.

According to the ground investigations of the old residential areas, options including zoning restrictions and reduction in building density will be evaluated. Buildings will be constructed on solid grounds where liquefaction will not occur.

Furthermore, the residential areas’ distance to the fault lines will be calculated by experts then risk analysis will be evaluated.

All new buildings will be placed on the 'plain-to-mountain settlement model' for resilient cities. During the construction, the raft foundation tunnel formwork system will be compulsory in all structures.

The settlements will be designed in accordance with the city's culture, art, natural and historical texture, sociology and demographic structure.

None of the residences will exceed the ground plus three or four floors as the construction of 200 thousand houses which will be started within two months by TOKİ. 

Scholars from universities, scientists, engineers, architects, and city planners will involve at every stage of the process.

After the search and rescue phase of the catastrophic earthquakes, the president noted that a total of 300,000 tents were set up and currently, 865,000 of our citizens are settled in tents, and 23,500 citizens are in containers.

READ MORE: Türkiye mobilises all resources, means for quake-hit provinces: Erdogan

Some 376,000 Turkish people stay in dormitories affiliated with the National Education Ministry and the Youth and Sports Ministry, he added.

"Over 1.1 million buildings have been inspected in the region. It was determined that 458,000 independent sections of 139,000 buildings are demolished, about to be demolished and severely damaged," Erdogan stressed.

More than 42,000 people were killed by the back-to-back quakes, according to the latest official figures. Thousands of others were injured.

Anyone who wants to help the earthquake victims, here's what you can do.