Survivors still being found as quake death toll tops 25,000 in Syria, Turkey
Now to the devastating earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria earlier this week. The death toll surpassing 24,000 this morning, but miraculously rescues continue with survivors being pulled from the rubble more than 100 hours after the initial quake. The disaster overseas also putting a spotlight on potentially deadly design flaws on buildings right here in California. KTLA's Carlos Herrera joins us from our news center to explain. Carlos, good morning. Hey, good morning, Lauren and Pedro. The devastation across the sprawling border region.
The catastrophe has killed nearly 24,000 people, injured at least 80,000 others and left millions homeless in both countries. Entire neighborhoods of high rises have been reduced to rubble. Authorities say trapped people can live for more than a week, but the odds of finding more survivors are quickly waning. Meantime engineers are now suggesting that the scale of the devastation in the region was partly due to lack enforcement of building codes. Local seismic engineers saying this should serve as a warning for Southern California. Many of our buildings share the same design flaws as structures that collapse in Turkey and Syria. They say the main culprit in the destruction is inadequate configuration of steel reinforcing bars that allows concrete to become brittle and explode when shaken.
A structural engineer from California who is currently assisting at ground in Turkey says the damage from a similar quake here could be quite devastating. You're going to see if the 7.8 happens for the older concrete structures, you're going to see somewhere between the 30 percent, 40 percent range, you're going to see either major damage or partial collapse or collapse. You're going to see that kind of ratio. That rate pretty high. Miyamoto says a 7.8 quake here in Southern California could cause about 50 of these concrete framed buildings to fully or partly collapse.
They were popular after World War II and line many of allies boulevards. In addition to the construction flaws, Miyamoto says many SoCal buildings have not been evaluated or retrofitted. Many local governments have not required the evaluation of these concrete buildings. LA, Santa Monica and West Hollywood have, but the deadline is decades away in LA. It's actually scheduled for the 2040s. Miyamoto says the inaction from local politicians will end up costing lives here in California, especially because the state hasn't been tested with a massive 7.8 quake in more than a century.
The last one was in 1906, which destroyed much of San Francisco, Lauren. Yeah, it's an important issue and just such a tragedy in Turkey. Carlos, thank you for that.
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