Heaviest Rains In 80 Years Kill 31 In Turkey

Murad Sezer and Ayla Jean Yackley, PlanetArk 10 Sep 09;

ISTANBUL - Flash floods killed 31 people in northwest Turkey, sweeping through the city of Istanbul, swamping houses, turning highways into fast-flowing rivers and drowning seven women in a minibus that was taking them to work.

Twenty-six died in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city with 14 million inhabitants, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said late on Wednesday, after two days of the heaviest rain in 80 years produced sudden flood waters which engulfed low-lying areas.

Another five died in Saray, west of Istanbul, reportedly all from the same family. Nine more were missing, Erdogan said.

In Istanbul rescue workers, some on boats, put out planks and ladders to help drivers, stranded in fast-flowing waters, reach the safety of bridges and high land. Military helicopters also assisted bringing stranded people to safety.

The worst flooding occurred in areas in the west of the city, on the European side, where drainage is often poor.

The waters began to recede late Wednesday revealing wrecked buildings and debris scattered across the streets, as distressed residents and workers started the clean-up.

Interior Minister Besir Atalay said the death toll could rise as waters continued to recede.

Witnesses said waves of muddy waters pulling cars, trees and debris crashed into homes and buildings early Wednesday as people were getting up to break their fasting during the holy month of Ramadan.

"We heard a crashing sound and then saw the waters coming down carrying cars and debris," said Nuri Bitken, a 42-year-old night guard at a truck garage.

"We tried to wake up those who were still asleep in the trucks but some didn't make it. The dead had to be retrieved by boats," Bitken told Reuters.

CNN Turk television showed scenes of white blankets covering the bodies of people found in the western Halkali neighborhood near Ataturk International airport. Airport officials said there was no disruption to flights.

"My friend got stuck in the truck after the water rose all at once. The vehicle stopped working after filling with water. We rescued him with a winch," Kamil Coskun told Reuters TV in Ikitelli district.

Istanbul's ancient district of Sultanahmet, with its famous mosques, the palaces of the waterfront and Beyoglu's area of narrow streets were largely unaffected.

In the Ikitelli commercial district, residents scrambled for office equipment amid debris. In other parts of the city, people waded chest-high through swamped highways.

HUGE DAMAGE

Insurance company Axa Sigorta Deputy General Manager Ali Erlat said damage from the floods could total $70 million-$80 million, the state-run Anatolian news agency reported.

Public Works Minister Mustafa Demir, who toured the worst hit areas, said there was "huge damage to infrastructure."

Ali Erdem, chief analyst at the Istanbul Meteorology Department, told Reuters Tuesday's rainfall was the heaviest recorded in the last 80 years.

The bodies of seven women were discovered in Bagcilar, a working-class suburb of Istanbul, Wednesday. They had drowned in a minibus that was taking them to jobs at a textile factory, Anatolian said.

Istanbul is situated on the steep banks of the Bosphorus strait, which divides Europe from Asia and is one of the world's busiest waterways -- a major conduit for cargo ships and oil tankers passing between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean.

Elsewhere in northwest Turkey, two bridges were demolished by floodwaters on the Bahcekoy-Saray highway.

Istanbul authorities have been more occupied in their disaster planning with making provisions for earthquakes in a city crossed by a major faultline. A quake killed 18,000 people in northwest Turkey in 1999.

(Editing by Charles Dick)

Turkey floods highlight need for climate change adaptation
WWF 11 Sep 09;

Istanbul, Turkey – Recent flooding in parts of Turkey has underscored the need to focus on ecologically-sound flood management practices to shield urban areas from extreme weather events, particularly those caused by climate change.

“The presence of deadly floods right in the heart of Istanbul first of all points at the insufficient infrastructure of the city,” said Dr. Filiz Demirayak, the CEO of WWF-Turkey. “Unregulated urban development and infrastructure have become barriers preventing rain water to reach the sea via its natural path.”

Turkey’s Thracian region and the capital Istanbul this week received a month’s worth of rainfall during two days -- or four times the total amount of average precipitation for this entire month -- causing massive flooding that led to the death of 30 people and widespread damage estimated at US $90 million dollars. Turkey's Meteorology Institute recorded 13.2 centimetres of rain fell in the area.

This week’s floods follow flash floods in July that killed at least six people in the north-eastern province of Artvin, and inundated more than 100 homes and businesses in the Black Sea province of Giresun.

"We are deeply saddened by the loss of life because of these floods and our thoughts are with the victim's families," said Demirayak.

Flooding occurred mostly because natural irrigation channels had been damaged and unplanned developments blocked the rain water from dissipating into the sea, WWF said.

“The insufficiency of water absorbing green areas and forests in the heart of the city is another factor that blocks water in the midst of concrete,” Demirayak said. “In the periphery of Istanbul and Tekirdağ river beds have been narrowed down, filled up by residential and industrial areas, thus blocking natural flood control mechanisms. The local municipalities and the government need to resolve the infrastructural problems of the city and prepare climate adaptation plan immediately.”

WWF warns that weather-related problems such as floods could worsen because of climate change unless ecological flood prevention techniques are adopted. These consist of river delta conservation and forest conservation. In addition, urban settlements along river beds must be closely monitored.

“Ecological flood management is the safest and most cost-effective solution,” said Dr. Demirayak. “If future damage is to be prevented, the climate change adaptation process has to start immediately.”

“The current infrastructure in Turkey cannot handle the consequences of climate change. WWF-Turkey calls upon the government and the municipalities to take immediate action for adaptation to climate change.”


Turkey's avoidable disaster
Simple precautions could have prevented the deaths of more than 30 people in Istanbul's floods
Bulent Kene, guardian.co.uk 11 Sep 09;

Turkey is back in the international media once more due to a tragedy: heavy rains that led to a flooding disaster in which more than 30 lives were lost in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city. The number of deaths is jarring. But what is much more shocking is that those people died not on the outskirts of the city of 12 million, but right in the middle of Istanbul.

For the last two days, every Turkish public official or municipal worker to open their mouth has spoken about the heavy volume of rain that fell and spoken of the "inevitability" of the "natural" disaster. I share the opinion of many city planners and experts on the subject who disagree with these evaluations. More than a natural disaster, this event in the heart of Istanbul seems to me a fully fledged man-made disaster.

Imagine you've woken up early one morning and hit the road in your car to catch a flight. As you travel along the highway, the only thing out of place you note is that it's raining particularly hard. But in an instant, the road you're driving on turns into an angry river, and the fierce waters of this river block the road in front of you and then sweep away your vehicle; you are stuck inside the car and (God forbid) you drown there. You had intended to catch your flight – perhaps on your way to meet a loved one or attend a business meeting – you had violated no rules. Something like this happening to you could probably only happen in a nightmare after you fall asleep following a heavy meal. If you think this is the case, you're wrong. What I've described is exactly what happened on Wednesday morning to someone a friend of mine knows. The person who called his son (my friend's friend) and spoke their last words, saying, "My car is entirely full of water," is no longer alive.

How could this citizen have known that the highway he took every day, which connects Istanbul's two main highways to one another – the busiest juncture in the city and the most important road leading to Turkey's biggest airport (the Basın Express Yolu, Press Express Road) – was built on a riverbank?

How could he have guessed that the highway he set out on stopped being a road with even the lightest rain, turning into a rushing river? And on top of this, despite meteorological warnings issued from Sunday, neither the police or the municipality, neither the highways directorate or any public administration took a single precaution regarding the dangers that awaited all who would use that road. So how would it have occurred to a citizen going about their business as usual that they would face the rushing waters of a flash flood that day?

It must also be asked why in Turkey, the municipality, the police department, the highways directorate or the government never thinks to take precautions to avoid disaster, but is always mobilising for rescue efforts and damage control after the fact. In cities in the United States and in Europe, when the risk of danger presents itself, the police, firefighters, ambulances and dozens of other public officials rise to the challenge. Why is it that we don't witness the same precautions being taken? Is it that the lives of Turkish citizens are worth much less than their western counterparts? Perhaps the people who most fall victim to dangers that could be addressed in advance by such life-saving precautions are the Turkish people. Because when it comes to the issues that affect their lives and pose a potential danger to them, they never encounter any intervention on the part of the police or any other officials. And as if this wasn't enough, following every tragedy that takes place, the people hear vows and advice from the public officials who should instead be accepting responsibility for their mistakes and apologising to society.

Let's speculate. If there had been a police barricade at the juncture that turns on to the highway in question, and had those motorists and passengers who lost their lives or had a narrow brush with death been warned and told not to use that route, would so many people still have died?

At the very least, wouldn't our friend's dearly beloved father still be alive today? If building permission hadn't been granted for land along riverbanks and gullies, if the use of unsuitable vehicles for employee transportation had been disallowed, and, what's more, if a highway hadn't been constructed along the longitude of a flood path, then today we would only be discussing how heavy rains had saved Istanbul from suffering from the level of drought next summer that it had faced this summer. We would have been talking about the great blessings brought along with the rain.

It's necessary to ask: in the absence of a disaster such as an earthquake, tsunami or similar event, is the rain responsible for the deaths of more than 30 people? Or does responsibility lie with the public officials who failed to take necessary precautions and allowed infrastructural insufficiencies? Where should the blame be placed, especially when the public officials failed to learn a lesson from a similar disaster in the same area 14 years ago?