The death toll from the powerful Feb. 6 earthquakes in southern Turkey rose to 43,556, Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said Wednesday.
Soylu made the remarks during a live broadcast with TRT Haber in Hatay, one of the 11 provinces that were hit by the quakes.
“This is one of the biggest earthquakes in the world,” he said.
About 300,000 new residential buildings are to be built in Turkey’s earthquake-stricken regions to make up for the lost housing stock, the Yeni Safak newspaper reported on Wednesday.
According to its information, the large-scale inspection revealed that more than 211,000 buildings have suffered severe or critical damage.
A total of about 370,000 buildings were inspected. It will be necessary to rebuild 400,000 buildings, of which about 300,000 is the housing stock, in the ten affected provinces.
The Directorate of Housing and Urban Development of Turkey has already started to implement the reconstruction plan.
At the first stage it will erect 30,000 buildings, and by June this figure will increase to 100,000.
Experts have revealed that 98% of the destroyed buildings were constructed before 1999, when the country experienced a devastating earthquake. After that disaster, a number of new building codes were adopted.
CURRENTPH NEWS SERVICE
