The Airport on a Fault Line: How Negligence and Mismanagement Made Turkey’s Earthquake Deadlier

April 18, 2023

(Wall Street Journal) – Danger signs were flashing from the start.  The airport was constructed on top of both a major fault line and a drained lake. Inspectors who had approved the location, near the country’s border with Syria, were unqualified, a southern Turkish court ruled in 2003, just four years after a quake near Istanbul had killed 17,000 people. A more alarming find was buried in that ruling: Nobody had assessed how the new airport would fare in an earthquake. (Read More)