Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams | Hacker News Reader

Turkey’s earthquakes show the deadly extent of construction scams

economist.com

288 pointsBrajeshwar307 comments

My wife has worked in the 'enforcing building codes' sector of engineering for her entire career. And it's so frustrating to watch.

Everyone - everyone - is certain that the codes are all overzealous and their little thing needs an exception. Politicians get elected promising to 'get rid of the red tape'. And then an event occurs and we learn why these building codes exist.

Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead.

But given time, the events the preceded their writing gets forgotten. I've never seen any of these buildings fall down, so why do we need so many rules to prevent buildings from falling down? They just make it more expensive! Those greedy bureaucrats and building officials just want to prevent development!

It cuts both ways. What about the homeless person dying in the cold because he can't afford shelter due to sky high building requirements - is that included in the building code enforcement rules?

That's more due to exclusionary zoning than building codes. There is no reason why we couldn't build, for instance, a boarding house under modern building codes, which would create more affordable housing on the low end. The reason that doesn't get built is that the zoning doesn't allow it.

That's partially true, but it's really a combo of both. Things like dual staircase requirements, elevator size requirements, and sprinkler requirements make it extremely expensive to build any sort of housing.

A recent affordable building in SF cost over $1 million per unit. That's completely unsustainable.

> Things like dual staircase requirements, elevator size requirements, and sprinkler requirements make it extremely expensive to build any sort of housing.

And you want and need precisely that in a house with fluctuating occupants of which a high percentage will have some sort of mental health issue.

Cutting corners on boarding houses will lead to fire catastrophes.

> Cutting corners on boarding houses will lead to fire catastrophes.

Nobody denies this. The question is whether said fire catastrophes really claim more lives than homelessness and wintering on the street. (Obviously fire catastrophes are a bigger PR problem and get more media attention, but is that really the appropriate metric for human suffering?)

They don't, but fire catastrophes are one of the most gruesome ways to die - and worse, a fire can always spread around and endanger even more people. There are reasons why fire codes are among the oldest laws in humanity.

A good advice is to remember that in case of fire what kills people most of the times, is the smoke. Having extinguishers -and- breathing bottles could help. Maybe there is room for designing a new product that would act as two in one?.

No but here's the thing: for all of those regulations, the US still has more fire deaths than most of Europe. So they're not working anyway!

https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/160882533241258393...

Defense in depth at work.

> The reason that doesn't get built is that the zoning doesn't allow it.

The problem is not just zoning. A boarding house simply doesn't generate noticeable income compared to standard residential housing, and with exploding land prices it simply makes no sense financially to cater to poor people.

If only there were some sort of organization that didn't need make a profit and wasn't "run like a business". One that everyone gave money to, for the benefit of all society, to make things better all, but especially for the lowest on the totem pole. If only such an organization existed! It could be in charge of governing the people, and the people could choose who runs it with some sort of choosen-ing procedure.

Or just regular medium density housing, like say 4-story 8 unit buildings. The stuff that makes up the majority of the housing stock in most Western countries, but seems impossible to build in most of the US due to zoning.

Setback, minimum square footage, minimum parking are all part of “building codes”, and can be used to enforce zoning and restrict development without sounding as political as “zoning”.

And those can be safety issues too.

I don't think I've seen a case where the local government wants to build more housing but, gosh, they're just too expensive. It's usually NIMBYism or just general disinterest in a "non-sexy" political issue.

This is entirely a "rich parts of the west" kind of a thing - and has nothing to do with Turkey

I think the earthquake is a standalone counter-argument to not wanting proper safety standards. Of the remaining buildings, how many are to be condemned as unsafe? I'm not sure what the homelessness problem is in Turkey, but I imagine it's now far worse.

Government does not build housing at all.

Maybe where you are, but in other parts of the world (eg Singapore), the government does!

> What about the homeless person dying in the cold because he can't afford shelter due to sky high building requirements - is that included in the building code enforcement rules?

That's ridiculous. There's a hundred different issues causing a homeless person to die on the street. Building code regulations are way down that fucking list of somewhat barely related causes.

That's not because of building codes. That's because of people who don't believe in helping their fellow man through, oh I don't know, paying taxes, supporting the welfare state, paying living wages etc.

> don't believe in helping their fellow man

Well, ok, since you started it - how much do you, personally, donate to homeless shelters and food banks? You have a lot of discretionary income to do so since your taxes are lower than you appear that you would like them to be.

Do you? If not, the SF Marin food bank would love your help! As little as a $20 one time donation would be appreciated. If you have an excess of time, in person volunteering is also deeply appreciated.

Spoiler alert: Unfortunately, no matter how much money or time you give to this organization, or similar, the ills of capitalism inflicted on the poorest residents in the area won't be solved.

I still donate anyway though.

https://donate.sfmfoodbank.org/page/32140/donate/1

Parent was talking about taxes, not quite the same as donating.

These shouldn't be supported by charity, thus the welfare state. It should be a burden put on all tax payers so that help can be provided beyond just what I feel like donating to. That's literally the point of taxes, and arguing that they should be higher isn't negated just because I personally don't donate to charities. It should be society as a whole (while given a progressive tax rate).

I should not have to donate a single penny to a charity to end homelessness. The US is a rich as fuck country, and has every ability to end poverty, up to and including increasing taxes for well off people like me.

Am I really supposed to believe that we could build an entire cargo ship every 3 days out of 18 shipyards in 1942, but we somehow can't build a million simple and dirt cheap homes?

Seems like it'd be smart to have a footnote or reference to the tragedy that informed the code on each section instead of allowing everything to be forgotten every couple years

Law needs Multiline comments!

For stuff like this, if you live in the region, you probably already know. Large earthquakes don't exactly happen every day. For example, if you want to get behind the "whys" of codes like this in CA, just look at: northridge earthquake, loma prieta earthquake, long beach earthquake, and the 1906 earthquake.

That reminds me of how the C standard had a separate “rationale” document [0].

[0] https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/C99RationaleV5.1...

This is sometimes done in a folk social engineering hack sort of way, by nicknaming certain pieces of legislation after those (usually children) whose tragedy inspired them. Amber's law, Megan's Law etc.

But even this strategy already reached oversaturation.

People just need to be more responsible, or else have fewer actions encoded as as rights instead of privileges.

The problem is that a hell of a lot of your foot notes are going to be "we want X but X is subjective so we're going to force you to do Y which can be objectively measured using Z, nobody has died or got injured yet but doing it this way prevents us from having any responsibility for judgement calls"

If the code says no more than two wires under a staple you'll still have the intended effect if you put two small wires and one big one under a staple sized for the big one. But that requires judgement to get right so they just say two wires only.

> Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead.

Or fire codes.

Related off-topic reminder, in the hope it may save one life one day: please use this comment as a reminder to check upon the status of your smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms and fire extinguisher. At the very least every room where people sleep in should have a smoke alarm and every room with a furnace (boiler, oven, kitchen, ...) a smoke and CO alarm. They must not be painted over, and their batteries be regularly replaced.

Each story of a house should have at least one extinguisher rated for classes A and B (solid and liquid combustibles), kitchens additionally a class F extinguisher (DO NOT EVER use a water/foam extinguisher on a fat fire). Fire extinguishers should be inspected by a licensed professional every two years and must not be used again after breaking the seal without a check-over by a licensed professional.

Also, have your building's electrical lines checked at least once a decade and after each major rework if they are up to code, and regularly check appliance cables for damage. Electrical defects account (in Germany) for roughly a third of all fires.

> Fire extinguishers should be inspected by a licensed professional every two years

I (in an affluent US east coast suburb) called my fire dept's non-emergency line to ask about this once a few years ago, and they told me this isn't something they do. So who does it?

Whoever sells extinguishers, I think.

Go to any commercial building and find their fire extinguishers. They'll have a tag on them indicating when they were inspected and who did it. Or look up 'fire extinguisher servicing [your metro area name]' or check with your local commercial occupancy inspectors department.

In Europe there's a service from minimax, one of the biggest fire extinguisher manufacturers. So I guess check up on the manufacturer, fire protection consultants, or any place that sells them.

Yeah, fire departments don't do that here in Germany as well... legal requirement is that the licensed professional has a license according to the norm DIN 14 406 pt. 4. I had a quick google about the situation in the US, turns out there seem to be zero requirements on who does an inspection [1] - utterly mind-boggling.

In your case I'd search for a company that is certified by NICET [2].

[1] https://www.nfpa.org/news-and-research/publications-and-medi...

[2] https://www.nicet.org/certification-programs/electrical-and-...

I cannot actually answer your question: I'd probably call back and if they still don't, I'd ask what to do.

What I can give you is the next best thing: A way to self-check. Most fire extinguishers have both an expiration date and a pressure gauge. You want the pressure to be in the green and the date to be in the future. They usually last 10-12 years with proper care, but you still want to regularly check these things.

My source for this: An inspector, who checked the extinguishers for the pharmacy I worked at back then (was employed or contracted by the pharmacy chain). It has been over 10 years, but it doesn't look like this information is out of date.

Once a year grab your oldest fire extinguisher and least proficient family member and hold a live fire(literally) training exercise.

It helps a bunch in an emergency when you are not preforming a technical operation for the very first time.

I will concede this may be tricky to pull off in a more urban environment, "Yes officer that's the idiot who lit his garbage can on fire in the middle of the street", in which case do without the fire, or make friends with the local fire department and they will let you do it in their parking lot.

Yep that's the plan - I just bought new ones to replace mine and we're gonna do that with the kids.

An independent private company that sells and rent fire extinguishers in your location (or near)

There are small tests recommended each one or two years, but also a more serious test. The bottle will probably need to be tested for an integrity check each five years to see if it can hold the pressure without bursting. Owner can't do this test by the risk of blow and the lack of the machines.

> Fire extinguishers should be inspected by a licensed professional every two years

Really? Do you know _anyone_ who does that? What will the professional do that we don't -- take a look at the charge level, take a look at manufacturer date?

You should call a professional and ask them what else they’d do.

Here's an out there suggestion: See if you have a paintball store near you, call them up, and ask them where they send their air tanks for testing/inspection. Last place I sent my paintball gun air tank to get inspected, they also did fire extinguishers.

Same recommended if you do scuba diving. Check your bottles for corrosion, valves, etc.

Any commercial building I'm in (in Germany) does that. The fire extuingishers have little stickers when the next inspection is due, and seeing that out of date by more than two months or so is a major red flag. Same with fire extinguishers in the hallways of bigger apartment buildings.

For private people it's less common to do that.

> What will the professional do that we don't -- take a look at the charge level, take a look at manufacturer date?

Here in Germany, the checklist is as follows - and government as well as insurances can and do audit companies if that is being followed:

- check for accessibility: is the location of the extinguisher properly marked on maps and does the wall have visible indicators that show where the extinguisher is? Can the extinguisher be reached and grabbed in an emergency or has random clutter accumulated next to it? Are the maps and indicator designs outdated? Are the indicator signs autoflourescent to make them visible even in the case of a fire-caused electrical blackout? Are there enough maps publicly visible that everyone can access one in case of emergency?

- for wall mounts: check if the holder is structurally sound or if someone ripped out half the screws by bumping into it?

- check if the tank itself hasn't expired. A tank usually is certified for ten years.

- inspect the extinguisher visually, look for dents etc. that may have led to corrosion of the tank or damage to the hose/nozzle (and subsequently a rupture risk should it be used). That is a very common occurrence in portable extinguishers that have been used as door stops.

- check if the extinguisher has been used / the seal been broken. If yes, that demands a full replacement of consumable parts (pressurizer agent, extinguisher agent, seals).

- check if the interior of the tank has been damaged by corrosion

- check if the pressurizer agent is not expired (most extinguishers here aren't permanently pressurized, instead they contain a CO2 cartridge) and weigh the cartridge to make sure it hasn't leaked

- check all O-rings and replace if necessary

Thank you! That looks like a great list, but for commercial buildings. For private accessibility\wall mount isn't going to move.

In Austria the local fire departments announce a day where you can check them and in some places they come buy once a year. In our multi unit building the building management does it.

And check your fire exits, if you live in a larger building. Know where the closest one is. Know where an alternative one is. Check they’re not locked or blocked.

Good point. I do the same whenever I'm at a crowded public venue - there have been enough catastrophes by stampedes and people unaware where to safely exit. Being able to actually keep calm in an emergency can and will save your life.

Reminds me so much of the vaccine "debate", "no one gets polio anymore, why do I need to get the polio vaccine?"

I mean that is kind of the _ultimate_ goal isn't it?

-Vaccinate the population, eliminate the disease in humans

-Eliminate the disease in any of its natural reservoirs

Once you're certain it's gone why continue vaccination? There's cost to that and those resources can then be dedicated to "active" diseases (perhaps with the instructions for that vaccine archived somehow).

Polio isn't eliminated though. Measles especially is nuts to skip. We don't vaccinate for smallpox because it has been eliminated.

And if you're in the military you do get vaccinated for smallpox still.

I'm guessing that's specifically to deal with the possibility of bio-warfare?

Correct

Yes, that's the point. But you continue on until the disease is eradicated, not just until a person's individual anecdote is that they don't know of anyone who has had it recently. That's the point when vaccination can safely cease.

The problem is that second step is EXTREMELY difficult to conduct and confirm. Given that and the extremely low risk of issues with vaccinations why risk it. We thought we were close with polio but there's been some recent back sliding on that front even here in the US with some weakened versions of the virus successfully infecting unvaccinated people.

Getting to the point where the disease is really gone is not an easy state to reach. Polio has been eradicated, yet we have small, latent pockets pop up every now and then. London in 2022, for instance: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61900915

I'm all for getting rid of useless things, but the long tail for diseases appears to be extremely long and resilient.

Not just cost, but also personal risk. Every injection (or drug) you put into your body carries a risk with it, especially a vaccine. People should get vaccinated, but pretending there is 0 risk associated with it just causes more antivaxxers IMO. And don't tell me that 0.001% chance is the same as 0% chance; for the one in 100k people injured by a vaccine, I can assure you it's not the same...

is there any difference in outcome between those two numbers? like are you gonna do one thing if it's 0% and another thing if it's 0.001%? no.

I think for most people it isn't, but only if you tell them the truth. If you gaslight them and say they are 100% safe, then you will get a much higher percentage of people losing trust and not taking the vaccine anymore.

Which is why every vaccine you get comes with a complementary documentation packet with several pages describing the possible known and unknown complications, things you should look out for, reasons you maybe want to turn this vaccine down, talk to your doctor, and try again later.

Like, why else are you required to sit around for twenty minutes after you get it?

look, like, vaccines are basically one of the greatest accomplishments of humankind, this assertion is pretty obvious from any reasonable review of the relevant science and/or facts of the stuff, and so it's difficult to take seriously anyone who comes to a different conclusion

like, if someone would believe you if you told them a vaccine is 99.9% safe, but would refuse to take that vaccine if you told them it was 100% safe? that person is not a rational actor, I'm not sure that they're anyone worth worrying about

Exactly. And it's higher than 4 nines, it's 5-6 nines.

I feel like only fringes of society would refuse the vaccine at that point. But what we do is lie and say it's 100%, losing all trust and making more antivaxxers in the process. The original ones that didn't want it at 5 nines wouldn't get it anyway, you're not winning them over by lying.

nobody has ever said vaccines are 100% whatever

It's basic psychology though. If I told you that my software was 100% magically secure against any and all attacks, vs this other vendor, who has an itemized list of things their product does, who are you going to think is blowing smoke up your ass?

I've never used the guard on that machine, and never had my hand cut off...

> it's so frustrating

I feel the same way developing software - the only thing that ever matters, and has ever mattered (at least since I started developing software in 1992) is "meeting the date". Whatever corners can be cut to make the date are cut, and then the thing breaks in fairly predictable ways because corners were cut. It's maddeningly infuriating and I'm not even dealing with people's lives here. I can't even imagine having to put up with this attitude when people could actually die.

Not sure what you are equating this to in software, but if it is security vulnerabilities, incompetence has probably more to do with it than time pressure. It takes about the time to write a parametrised query than to concatenate your strings.

The corners that are cut are often around automated testing, security, best practices. And it adds up, so if nothing is done right then it’s faster to keep doing it wrong than rearchitect or abstract everything so you can have a clean implementation.

Honestly, I haven’t been working that long (about a decade) but this general attitude from PHBs calling the shots in software makes me count the months until I can retire early and never write code for money again. It’s just soul sucking to fight everyone on this and then fight again when overtime is needed to add more bandaids to the resulting abomination because the date won’t be met.

I don't know your situation, but I'd encourage you to find one that isn't "soul sucking" that you can actually live with. Life's too short to spend it in a job you hate, especially if you have an in demand skillset.

Yeah, I'd advise looking for work elsewhere, it's not supposed to be like that and I guarantee you that you could find something better

Many jobs are like that but far from all. I recommend looking for a new job where the PHBs are not calling the shots.

Depends on what you are building. Websites probably not going to kill you. Other things well...

https://hackaday.com/2015/10/26/killed-by-a-machine-the-ther...

"AECL never publicly released the source code, but several experts including [Nancy Leveson] did obtain access for the investigation. What they found was shocking. The software appeared to have been written by a programmer with little experience coding for real-time systems. There were few comments, and no proof that any timing analysis had been performed. According to AECL, a single programmer had written the software based upon the Therac-6 and 20 code. However, this programmer no longer worked for the company, and could not be found.'

I disagree. Yes, a lot of them are caused by incompetence to some extent but we should use processes where the harm of incompetence is limited and where we take quality and security seriously. Blaming it on individual incompetent developers is unhelpful when the industry allows this and encourages it since it increases the short term output of new features.

Everyone started out as an incompetent developer.

Everyone makes stupid mistakes sometimes. If you are perfect 99.9% of the time, you're still doing something wrong every quarter.

For three years I got the team to still do a drill release cycle around the holidays because we were running into trouble hunting down regressions when we went two or three weeks. People start to forget things, especially around holidays.

This year they decided to skip a bunch. We had one almost disaster that I caught, so of course we’re going to forget why we did this stuff in the first place. Until the next time it blows up.

There were API keys literally sitting on the site of a F500 company at one point. This is because they were using DJANGO and some brilliant engineer thought having them in the "base.html" was good because that means they could be accessed on any page pretty easy.

I soon realized though that they didn't care about that issue and it would have to be fixed after "busy season." Coincidentally, busy season is 365 days a year. The keys are finally gone but they were there for well over 2 years. I went back to check every now and then lol

The only thing were that does not hold, ironically, is startups, were the boss is involved with the product and suddenly all the gamed metrics, are suspended and things get done properly. Goto love those no longer important deadlines.

Well, the code is always overzealous (never met an exception), and the smaller the house the more overzealous it is.

If it wasn't, we would have a much easier time persecuting people that breaks it, and much more public sympathy for large culprits that actually have much fewer (relatively to their capacity) strings over then than any random person. The same applies to fire codes.

> The same applies to fire codes.

As someone who has been close to almost-tragedies caused by fires, can you give me examples where fire codes are over-zealous? I've had family almost getting killed, even though they did follow the fire codes - the didn't even get a fine or a case against them. If you ask me, the fire codes were not strict enough in that instance.

Almost every city has a "the fire of XXXX", those no longer occur for a reason. And to state the obvious, that reason is fire codes.

I mean, it's possible for something to be simultaneously overzealous and not strict enough. If the code focuses on the wrong measures, it could end up putting unnecessary red tape, while completely failing to provide adequate safety.

I don't know enough about fire code to know whether it applies here.

It's often the case that this happens, because building/fire codes always balance cost as a part of the decision whether or not to require something... sometimes cheap things don't help much but we do them anyway because they're cheap. Sometimes expensive things would help a lot but we don't do them because it's prohibitively expensive.

> can you give me examples where fire codes are over-zealous?

There's a small movement to eradicate the requirement for midrise buildings to have 2 stairways. Advocates point to European regulations and claim that a single stairway is just as safe as 2.

Double stairways, they say, makes construction more expensive and results in awkward, undesirable apartment layouts.

https://slate.com/business/2021/12/staircases-floor-plan-twi...

Yes, I suspect this rule will be removed more and more as the housing crisis continues across first world metros.

Many European regulations on fire safety are pretty stringent in other areas too that equally run up costs. Also certain buildings require two staircases but scissor staircases are permitted.

I remember a commentator in a previous thread mentioned something like...

'In NY "Fire-Proof" buildings can be built like that', when they're built out of materials that do not burn and in ways where the fire cannot spread. Effectively the safer place in a fire, in theory, would be to shelter in place as it cannot spread.

I'm all for using as many non-burning materials as possible in building construction.

This to me sounds like another case of out of context "Europeans do this, so it must be better". From personal experience, the UK takes fire safety much more serious than the US: fire alarm tested every week, fire drills are made often and *for real*, fire doors everywhere, every kitchen has a fire blanket (not just an extinguisher), every building has 2 doors, every appliance has a plug with a fuse in the plug itself (btw, American plugs are a joke) etc.

Are you proposing to get rid of the second stairway alone, or are you going to bring all the other regulations too?

This the same UK that had a scandal a while back about a high-rise fire caused by idiotic external cladding materials? :-)

If breaking the regulations leads to prison for those responsible, it's working as best as it can.

(Legal cases, inquests etc continue.)

Prison time won't bring back any of the 72 people that died.

It never does, but what more could have been done?

The regulations existed and were illegally broken.

Maybe they could just put a fire pole or a rope on the other end.

It may not be as ideal as stairs, but if it's a backup option you'd think that'd be much less costly while still allowing at least a majority of people to escape.

US apartment buildings are much more likely to involve wood frame construction than EU apartment buildings.

Kitchen Sinks are required to have an outlet within 2 feet. I redid our kitchen and we ran into that issue. There were outlets on every corner of the island but all slightly farther than 2 feet away. Lucked out and our rough inspector let it slide. Finish inspector called it out but luckily they let it slide because the rough inspector let it slide. Theoretically they could have made me rip it all out.

Spooked me enough to make me not get permits for the next renos. Too many arbitrary rules that can make projects spiral without any real safety improvement.

I don't understand your thought process in this situation at all.

Things worked out for you when you followed the rules, and because they worked out, you're not going to follow the rules in the future?

I lucked out that the first inspector was lazy and/or incompetent. He was there for 5 minutes and spent 4 of them chatting about his kid's baseball game. If I had the second inspector first he would have made me rework the design.

By "rework the design" you mean move one outlet six inches closer to the sink?

That code is a mish-mash of a real safety thing (we don't regulate extension cords at all, so we try to make sure there are outlets everywhere and you don't need them... especially around water, like a sink!) and a general effort to make sure that if you buy a house, you don't figure out later that it's a piece of shit. My favorite examples are minimum length of extra wire in a box, and a neutral required. I don't think those have to do with safety at all, but holy crap am I glad they exist, as someone who didn't build their own house, or have my inspector take the covers off every box before we bought our current house.

Now, when you sell your house, is the next person gonna be a bit miffed that there are no outlets in the kitchen anywhere near the sink? What about when they go to install a smart outlet and there's no neutral, and 1cm of hot wire to work with? That's gonna suck too, but you didn't permit anything and went off your gut so... fuck them I guess?

Like I said, there's an outlet on every corner of the island about 2.5 feet from the sink. And on the other kitchen sink there's one immediately on each side. Nobody is getting fucked.

I'm more commenting on:

> Spooked me enough to make me not get permits for the next renos.

I have no idea what you're going to decide is up to your own personal code going forward.

This is the fun part about buying a house in a rural area with no real regulation enforcement. Part of the house is 70 years old. Another part is an addition built by a previous owner. Every maintenance item is a journey of adventure and discovery.

There's no less than three breaker panels in the house itself and it's never immediately clear which panel goes to which outlet/fixture/appliance.

I gave up installing a faucet in the kitchen and called a plumber. He cut the PVC monstrosity out from the cabinet and took it back to the shop to show his buddies.

You know that little drain line that comes from the AC to handle condensation? It is not a good idea to have the other end of it in the crawl space.

Given modern information presentation technology, every single limit like that in the codes should be linked to a document detailing why the limit is what it is, with a short summary and preferably videos of what happens when the limit is and is not adhered to.

I don’t doubt there are great reasons for most of the rules, and the best way to get compliance is to explain why they’re there. And some may be overzealous indeed and then they would hopefully be adjusted.

How is that a bad safety measure? if not close enough, people will use extension cords, which will be significantly more dangerous than proper outlets.

There's an outlet 2.5 feet away. No need for an extension cord.

Okay, what if it was 3 feet away? What about 3.5 feet away? At which point do they stop being overzealous?

From a top-level comment: Everyone - everyone - is certain that the codes are all overzealous and their little thing needs an exception.

You built something that wasn't to code and now you're sad that they told you that you did it wrong, but allowed it to stand because in their judgement it wasn't critical enough to have you rework it? The IRC is freely available, just read the code and follow it! It's dead simple. They even have pictures: https://cdn-codes-pdf.iccsafe.org/bundles/document/new_docum...

In my city, there is a required setback of 4' on all sides for solar panels to be installed on flat roofs... all flat roofs. I have a flat roof garage that is 12' x 24' and this law, which is ostensibly for large commercial flat roofs, is preventing me from putting more than 2 panels on my roof. This is the fire code.

It's not just for commercial buildings, it's requested by fire departments for homes too, and it's in the international fire code https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2018/04/know-your-code...

I agree that you could argue a garage should get an exemption if it's under X height and surface area. But otherwise, it seems like a sensible request.

Too bad, I was hoping solar garages and solar car ports would take over the world... Maybe if you build the roof out of structural solar panels.

The only one I can think of is the fire codes that require you to add a full sprinkler system to an existing house if you do any modifications to it.

Which means you do nothing and have no sprinklers.

Well, the code is always overzealous

It's only overzealous to people trying to cut corners. It's never overzealous to the people who are killed or hurt.

There are people who are killed or hurt by overzealous code who you don't know about.

Can you name some?

There are finite resources. Resources used to comply with overzealous regulations are not spent in other ways. Some of these other ways save lives. Pick whichever ones you want - additional smoke detectors, pollution reduction, etc., etc.

It's ridiculous to advocate arbitrary, putative, safety enhancing measures without an argument about why that way of spending resources is better than many of the other alternatives.

In absence of "overzealous" regulation, a property developer could use some of the money they were going to spend on the job on, say, additional smoke detectors to make the place safer, but given NO requirements to spend money on something like smoke detectors, and that fact that it isn't their home or office they're working on, it seems far more likely excess money would go to other things. Like a bigger truck, video games, a sports car, trips to Europe/America/Asia, alcohol, cocaine, strippers (women who take their clothes off for money, not the work tool used to separate wire from insulation). Which are all things that one could choose to do with their own money, but I'd rather that regulations cause the money to go towards making houses safer so they don't burn down, or fail in an earthquake/tornado/hurricane/winter and kill somebody.

Bigger picture. It's not the property developer. It's the cost of the additional regulations which causes the marginal house buyer to not spend money on a smoke detector or a safer car.

"* There are people who are killed or hurt by overzealous code who you don't know about.*"

So you cannot name anyone. This is a completely hypothetical argument.

Well done. Of course it is. Just like the broken window fallacy.

autocorrelated risk + insensitivity to scale.

If 100 people died every week of building code violations in that time people would care more

An increasing problem locally (Boulder) is the use of the permitting process to push high-cost climate goals on home owners, leading to them skipping permitting and inspection entirely.

Here, you’re required to choose at least three expensive improvements from a set of eight (iirc), ranging from relatively cheap (electric vehicle charger) to very expensive (rooftop solar).

My home was built in the 1970s, the bathrooms had mold and had to be gutted, and the place was in desperate need of a remodel just to be livable.

I already have rooftop solar and an electrical vehicle charger, but that’s not enough.

I was expected to spend roughly an extra $40k — on top of a $120k remodel — adding additional features and replacing perfectly good portions of my home to meet Boulder’s climate goals.

I can’t afford that, but my house isn’t livable as-is.

As a result, I’m having a bunch of work done without permitting or inspection.

I hate it, but that’s the Faustian bargain people choose when government tries to leverage safety regulations as a stick to enforce expensive, non-safety related ends.

We have the same problem in Telluride. I have to pay an extra 20k to get an upgraded circuit to charge my Rivian when I am already under the limit.

If it costs you 20k to upgrade a circuit, your story is missing some important details.

This sort of thing can easily spiral to needing a new main power line due to the increased amp requirements.

Yes. But the price of those combined should still be nearly an order of magnitude cheaper than $20k.

$20k is "gut and rewire everything in an expensive metro area" kind of money.

There's no way you're getting a new box, meter, and service wire for $2k anywhere in the US. Certainly not California.

Plus, lots of places require these to be buried. So you've got trenching costs and that's a pain too. $20k is definitely within the ballpark of a cost.

Did mine last year for $1200... and I had new grounds installed for that price too. But yes, it was above ground.

But my point is, if someone need to do all of these things, it's for a reason. And these tasks aren't "upgrade a circuit", they're, "upgrade my home's electrical service"

Like I said, it's a spiral. You have a moldy bathroom and they make you get a car charger, which is a new circuit, which changes the load calculation, which changes your service needs, which changes your box requirements. Strict adherence to code has a way of making costs explode.

Haha absolutely not. PG&E says that 5% of projects in California cost over $20k just for trenching in new underground service feeder. That doesn't even begin to mention the new main panel and all the branch wiring behind it.

If you need to upgrade your panel it can easily cost $100k.

My point is that trenching your yard up because your electrical system legitimately can't handle the load is not "use of the permitting process to push high-cost climate goals on home owners". The necessity of a higher gauge service line is a legitimate safety regulation.

If it costs someone $100k to replace their service panel, I suppose they can just borrow that out of their budget for yacht fuel for the month. Because they clearly have a property much different than average. https://www.bobvila.com/articles/cost-to-replace-electrical-...

"skipping permitting" is probably better described as "breaking the law"

if you can't afford to meet construction requirements then you can't afford to construct, i guess

It doesn’t matter what you call it, or whether you agree with the choice, the end result of overly burdensome requirements like these is a decrease in the safety of housing.

"overly burdensome" isn't an objective measure, and certainly isn't whatever you judge to be beyond your own level of acceptability

Forty-two years ago, homes here didn’t have to be permitted at all.

Building codes and related permitting regulations were established to ensure safety, and accepted by the public under those auspices.

The addition of novel, non-safety related political requirements exceeds this original remit and undermines the entire telos of residential building codes.

This inescapably leads to reduced compliance with the regulatory process, and thus, less-safe housing.

So, yes, “overly burdensome”.

You're asserting that there exists a set of "non-safety related political [building] requirements" which are significant enough to substantiate your conclusions. This is in no way self-evident.

>Everyone - everyone - is certain that the codes are all overzealous and their little thing needs an exception. Politicians get elected promising to 'get rid of the red tape'. And then an event occurs and we learn why these building codes exist. Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead.

Can't it be both? A more restrictive code does not solve the problem of construction scams. Enforcing a useful code, might

> Everyone - everyone - is certain that the codes are all overzealous and their little thing needs an exception. Politicians get elected promising to 'get rid of the red tape'. And then an event occurs and we learn why these building codes exist.

> Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead.

Some of the rules are, but some of the rules aren't. When code calls for a maximum distance between electrical outlets, that's partially for convenience, and partly because of unsafe practices with extension cords, so there's some blood there, but if you miss the mark by a foot, it's not disasterous.

Uniform application of some rules without considerations for cost or practicality is foolish. For example, where I live, with my size house, any permitted remodeling triggers a requirement to retrofit fire sprinklers, despite the fact that I have a well which likely couldn't supply said fire sprinklers in a reasonable manner --- especially if a fire resulted in electricity being cut off, or was caused by unsafe heating choices when utility electricity was out of service (this is a common cause of house fires as I understand it). You could mitigate that with a high mounted water tank, but that's not actually required, might require substantial engineering to ensure the weight of the water and tank doesn't exceed the structure's weight bearing capacity, and would add significant maintenance to ensure the condition of the tank such that it did not leak and cause major damage to the structure. Oh, and how are you supposed to get such a tank into an attic like that anyway?

Structural requirements tend to be more likely to be written from experience though. And earthquakes and high winds have a way of striking everywhere. TR is known to be seismically active, so cutting corners on earthquake safety is a worse risk/cost tradeoff than in places where earthquakes are rare.

> When code calls for a maximum distance between electrical outlets, that's partially for convenience, and partly because of unsafe practices with extension cords, so there's some blood there, but if you miss the mark by a foot, it's not disasterous.

I mean, it could be disastrous, couldn't it? That foot could be the threshold of someone saying "Aw screw it, I'll just use my parent's frayed extension cord from the 70s."

Designing to prevent common mistakes – even if they're stupid mistakes – is a good idea, but you can't idiot-proof absolutely everything. At some point personal responsibility starts. I think this is somewhere before "I'll use a frayed extension cord from the 70s" – even a child can understand that's not a good idea.

Where I roughly draw the line is where the user was stupid. People should know not to be dangerous with extension cords; but there's no way a user should be required to know that the fifth outlet box on the left side actually has no box and that if you were to pull out something plugged into it the whole outlet would come out of the wall and short to a water line.

And perhaps this kind of thing should be more explicit in the code - things that are for convenience and things that are actual life/death safety issues.

And as we see, the latter often involves things that only become apparent when disaster strikes.

Fire sprinklers are extremely useful even connected to a limited water supply because fires start small and sprinklers can respond quickly.

As long as as you have enough water to use a shower that’s plenty to make a huge difference because they don’t operate like in the movies where everything in the building goes off at once. Instead you only get water when part of the sprinkler head got hot enough to melt.

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDNolxbzsP0

The odds of dying in a fire aren’t very high, but they can also prevent your house from burning down.

The last house we lived in---a moderately expensive and well constructed house, compared to many of the others we looked at---didn't have electrical boxes behind wall- and ceiling-mounted light fixtures. The romex was just directly connected to the fixture and the fixtures were secured with drywall anchors.

Disastrous?

Electrical boxes are low cost during construction and address a real risk; electrical connections are where wiring is most likely to break and potentially cause heat and sparks. Electrical boxes are an effective mitigation to that risk, and really should have been included in construction. Retrofitting boxes in may be a lot of labor though. In bulk, single gang new work boxes are less than $1/box, and don't take much time to put in (two nails + a little extra time while wiring to pull the wire through the holes). Plenty of other places to save a little money and a little time.

For heavy fixtures, like large chandeliers and ceiling fans, appropriate boxes also help with bearing the weight; preventing the fixtures from pulling out of drywall and being suspended only by the wiring.

Teach your mother to suck eggs. :-)

The thing is, in the absence of someone (like an inspector) specifically checking, you can assume that anything that isn't immediately visible uses the cheapest possible materials and the fastest, shoddiest installation.

In my case, it may have been as simple as, "we didn't order enough junction boxes and we're running late as it is; just skip 'em".

Simultaneously: https://www.theurbanist.org/2023/02/07/one-stairway-is-enoug...

There are building codes that are designed to increase authentic safety, and those that are actually trying to achieve other ends, like decreasing the supply of available housing, via the claim of "safety."

"Safetyism" is everywhere: https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/safetyism-is-the-water-...

In America lots of people have died in single stairway buildings. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire created a political dynamic where buildings are expected to have dedicated fire escape stairs and that remains a strong social contract to this day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fi...

maybe since then there is a better local optimum in this problem-solution space, hm?

fire safety engineering is a very respectable field, mandating a particular implementation instead of a required safety level is the opposite to good long-term policy.

Indeed, that seems likely. But there are political and social realities to consider. If what is optimal is something along the lines of: "In case of fire, if there is a fire escape then use that, otherwise shelter in place" then a conditional that must be evaluated ends up embedded in the emergency plan. This is a much bigger problem than is immediately obvious. If everyone knows that in case of a fire one should exit through the fire escape stairs then this leads not only simplification of emergency procedures but also their enforcement. In America seeing a fire escaped blocked or chained up is cause for immediate alarm and enforcement with the general public being perfectly capable of basic inspection themselves. Having an extremely simple plan for fire safety can help increase reliability because everyone knows and understands the plan, can contribute to enforcement, and execute the plan when there is an emergency. Engineering optimization not only does generate conflicts with social and political realities but in fact almost inevitably does so.

>It's so frustrating.

You know what's frustrating? Seeing someone who's clearly got enough exposure to building code and similar types of workplace requirements to know they're being misleading do it anyway because they know it's what the audience wants to hear.

A huge fraction of code is not written in blood. A huge fraction of those exception requests are legitimate from a "performance of the thing in question" system.

Much of the specific verbiage and the specific requirements in code come from a desire to free people like your wife from having to make and be responsible for the outcome of judgement calls.

Nobody's house ever burnt down because the wire staples were spaced 1" too far apart. It's just that a line had to be drawn somewhere because inspectors can't be expected to make judgement calls on such minutia at scale.

If clipboard warriors cared to explain this it to the people they'd catch less flak.

My very blue collar brother in law became a code enforcement employee for his rich as fuck town for a while. The ONLY people who bitch about building codes are the ones who are CLEARLY out of compliance with code, have been for decades, and have been getting a pass due to nepotism previously, and then they have the time and spite to go to town office meetings and publicly bitch about their previous privileged status and wanting to keep that stupid level of privilege. Everyone else is mostly in compliance, trying to keep compliant, and will definitely get a pass from an enforcement official because it's clearly not a problem. If you don't act like a dick, you will almost always get a pass if it's not a clear violation that probably would fuck someone over in the future.

My father is a completely self taught and self employed contractor for the exact same area. Code compliance is so clear, simple, and easy that he considers it a rubber stamp process and has never complained about it, while he happily complains about spending $400 a year to keep his business properly licensed in the state, while he refuses to increase his prices to keep up with the gouging local contractors are able to do because of extremely high demand.

A rich town where everyone just afford compliance with everything all the time isn't very illustrative. I bet nobody there drives cars on bald tires or pays their babysitter off the books either.

In places where money doesn't grow on trees harder decisions have to be made. Situations like "do I hire a real electrician to install my heat pump and get forced to bring my panel up to current code at great expense or do I hire someone to just install the heat pump on a cash basis or do I replace my existing system like for like" become more common.

I agree code is stupid simple if you're building cookie cutter stuff. It can get very, very, annoying when you're dealing with systems that have N generations of changes and/or are trying to be minimally invasive. Would you rather take a hole saw to the main beam of someone's house or have a sink drain that's a hair too flat for a portion of it's run?

Since I live in the Bay Area which does have earthquakes, we have very strict building codes. Your water heater has to be secured to the wall, as one simple example, and I've personally heard of houses catching fire because of the water heater falling over.

That said: there are always "grandfathered" buildings which were built before the latest codes; unreinforced masonry, for example. What politician wants to tell the owner, "hey, sorry, you've got to tear that down" ?

So, aside from builders ignoring codes, I wonder how many of the buildings in Turkey were built before earthquake-proofing was required?

I wonder at this point if the Japanese real state model is the correct one:

* Building code is constantly updated, and this makes old built homes undesirable - building itself is worth 0 yen after around 7 years;

* Shrinking population means most real estate is actually empty/abandoned on low demand areas;

* Very disaster prone area so most buildings are either new (and build code compliant) or constantly being tested for disaster resistence;

* Few invest on real estate speculation as the return-on-investment is horrible.

> I wonder how many of the buildings in Turkey were built before earthquake-proofing was required?

I'm no expert, but when I was in Turkey in 2010 I took pictures of soft clay hollow bricks that were being used in new construction for the bulk of the building. You've likely seen pictures of similar bricks as they are used all over the world, but they are as fragile as eggshells.

Surprisingly many of the buildings were new. Even 1 month old projects collapsed. While old buildings constructed upto code remained unscathed.

They built the buildings without adhering to code. They get a project approved, do whatever they want (steal materials, build another floor, decide not to dig a foundation) and sell the projects advertising that the buildings are upto code. As we have a highly corrupt government, they pay their bribes and get the building approved. Also, the building inspectors are private companies, they approve buildings without ever going on site.

Even newly built government buildings such as hospitals, airports collapsed!! Even those buildings were built with bribes :(.

Corruption killed us here :(.

In Turkey it is different, even the minimum requirements were bypassed with exemptions due to government's contractors friendly policies, and Erdoğan has recently been promising "the biggest social housing project in the history of the Turkish republic'. Most houses in Turkey are of inferior quality, I visited Antalya and the thin walls and roofs of buildings and rooms of the flats barely had privacy in terms of sound proofing within it and with the neighboring flats. The same was the rule up north, and from my discussions with some locals inferior quality and low standard was not only in building materials and standards but in several other sectors.

Engineering requirements for buildings in America come in two forms: code-conforming buildings that can be built by anyone, and whatever you want as long as a qualified engineer has signed off on it. When looked at from that perspective, it's clear that the code exists to make the construction business cheaper and more efficient. Nothing about the code will prevent you from building anything you really want. You just need engineers.

“Red tape is painted with the blood of innocents who died before those regulations existed” - probably the best way to state it in a pithy manner.

Code overzealousness isn't the issue... it's months-long delays in permitting & rampant understaffing of city inspectors that are required to inspect every little thing causing construction to start & stop every 2-3 days.

Aw man, if only it was widely agreed that we should adequately fund government, and that properly funding, staffing, and paying for government services could result in fewer problems.

What? Democrats are socialist? Okay I guess we will keep having the same problems then.

Aw man, if only Democrat super-majority California were not the absolute worst for construction permit hell, you’d have a point.

Good to know that if I ever need to switch jobs out of Info Sec I can get a job in building code enforcement.

In Turkey, these buildings were constructed by building companies close to government. They paid their bribes and constructed the buildings with making every shortcut.

What was Turkey's response? The governor of Hatay ordered to demolish the building construction control authority's archive (archive with signed and stamped construction projects, floor studies etc.), with the documents in it (i.e. to bury all evidence). The building is a one-floored archive and did not suffer any earthquake damage. Luckily a group of lawyers found out and stopped the destruction halfway. Now, with the pressure from the press, the heads of the building companies are arrested one by one.

Imagine the level of corruption when the governor orders to demolish the archive holding evidence without telling anyone :).

Could you link to any sources? This sounds big.

It is all over the social media and serious journalists picked up the story.

Here is the video of the lawyer(Bedia Büyükgebiz) live vlogging from the location, which went viral: https://twitter.com/haskologlu/status/1624433879154102275

The official statement is that all these paperwork and test results are already digitised but the lawyers say that the originals still need to be kept around for some time and destroyed under a strict protocol so to ensure that the digitised versions are indeed faithful to the originals(running the bulldozers over the building with the documents is not part of the protocol).

Also, the city still severely lacks heavy machinery for the rescue efforts and people find it suspicious why would the government would commission these to demolish a one story building, even if the building was damaged. Journalists on the ground say that they haven't heard of any other building being demolished for safety reasons.

Building companies are close to the government everywhere. Try getting permits without access to the city council or mayor. Turkey is a major faultline (and most of the northern Mediterranean) and seems to constantly have earthquakes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_earthquakes_in_Turkey

In the same area of the earthquakes now (the size of the UK) there was an earthquake in 115 AD that killed 260 thousand people:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/115_Antioch_earthquake

The source of the 260 thousand killed is unknown and a century after the event, according to the same Wikipedia article, but Antioch also had a Circus, built during the time of Augustus, that could host 80 thousand spectators.

> Try getting permits without access to the city council or mayor

It's depressing/comforting to know that my town is not unique in this regard.

I have the impression that local power is always more corrupt than central/national power. Less scrutiny and more opportunity for doing dirt without getting caught.

There was another, smaller (est 7.5 vs. 7.0) quake in late May of 526:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/526_Antioch_earthquake

(followed by a fire) that also reportedly killed 250 thousand. The two figures are close.

A lot of historically big numbers turn out to be greatly exaggerated, maybe as a part of the storytelling process. For example, some old books claimed the toll of the 1737 Calcutta (quake or cyclone) was around 300,000 - while there were no more than 10,000 residents at the time. https://rashidfaridi.com/2008/05/13/earthquakes-in-asia/

Will be interesting to see, were the responsibility dominos stop.

Exactly. They're not scams. It is much worse than that. Everything was legalised by Turkey's government.

This is why all the building company CEOs will walk free because their lawyers can produce the paperwork that proves everything was above board. AKP is checkmate.

Also "Why did so many buildings collapse?" https://www.bbc.com/news/64568826

Quote: In Turkey [..] the government has provided periodic "construction amnesties" - effectively legal exemptions for the payment of a fee, for structures built without the required safety certificates. These have been passed since the 1960s (with the latest in 2018). [..]Up to 75,000 buildings across the affected earthquake zone in southern Turkey have been given construction amnesties[..]

This was also mentioned in this article.

This is really difficult business and I recently ended in a dispute with my civil engineer wife because I wanted to move a shelf towards the center of the room. She is I guess right reminding me that trial and error is not a good strategy in her business. I always think, that a 120 year old building somehow should not collapse due to my books.

However, when it comes to earthquake standars over time it really gets even stranger. I live in a region in Germany that recently got an 'upgrade' on earth quake forces after recent surveys. However, regulators still do not enforce new standards. So my wife has to recommend all her customers to adopt new standards, but tells them in the same sentence that it is not yet required. With rising construction costs nobody choses to. So we are all waiting cynically for the predicted major earthquake so that we are on the same standard again. Some by design, some empirically proven.

>But given time, the events the preceded their writing gets forgotten. I've never seen any of these buildings fall down, so why do we need so many rules to prevent buildings from falling down?

That is the problem with how the rules are written. The rules should have a context to reasons why these particular rule was employed. I imagine something like an wiki page with lots of links.

> Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead.

I mean this is highlighting a problem. Could the rules have a heavily annotated and multi-layered version that shows the related precedents?

It's also important to consider that not everything is sane in the regulations book. Just look at your local HOA and then combine it with "my job relies on writing regulations" conflict of interest.

That's not to strawman, without regulations, the world would be an extremely unsafe place. Just keep rational about how far to push in the name of public safety. We can always do more, but at some point we completely stagnate any development what so ever. Everything is dangerous, the question really is quantifying and analyzing acceptable dangers.

The safest thing is to build absolutely nothing.

> Like workplace safety rules, they are written in the blood of the dead.

Absolutely true I'm guilty of binging a few youtube videos on aviation and engineering failures over the winter, as well as videos on road infrastructure (slowly, as a cyclist, I understand that motorists are not just idiots but idiots on roads built by idiots) and I'm pretty sure there are youtubers that produce content on construction failures that lead to this or that code. For example the Knickerbocker Theater was code compliant but it still failed and the codes updated afterwards, rescue operations were also a bit of a mess https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4P7qHjp3nE or the collapse of a parking deck in Canada that also showed how important nearby rescue services are when salt has eaten through your concrete and steel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxLtWiJ8uVg or this building that had extra load added to the roof while the columns underneath were not built as intended https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxLtWiJ8uVg

Maybe educating the future building owners with content like this will show then that there are a lot of dangers known and unknown?

> In nearby Erzin county, however, not a single building collapsed. The local mayor and his predecessor told local media that they did not allow any illegal construction. Both used the same phrase: “My conscience is clear.”

That mayor, Ökkeş Elmasoğlu, should perhaps run for president.

Take a look at what happened to Ekrem Imamoglu recently.

I can't help but think that Erdogan's team is already looking for dirt on Ökkeş Elmasoğlu just because Ökkeş just made Erdogan look really bad.

Very interesting the sad contrast with reality, in particular, considering that there has been an occurrence of this event already, and then lesson hasn't been learned:

The fact that this is the exception is so sad. I don’t know how our species made it so far in spite of its own nature.

I can’t imagine how much pressure and intimidation this mayor suffered to refuse bribes from (probably very) well resourced and connected individuals/cartels.

> I don’t know how our species made it so far in spite of its own nature.

You're probably overestimating the representation of corruption among individuals. It's rare, not common; which is also why it upsets most everyone (if it were actually the common, it wouldn't upset so). Obviously it can also be more common in some places than others, depending on context. And it's a percentage tax - a friction - on progress, not an absolute stoppage.

> (if it were actually the common, it wouldn't upset so)

Mortality is universal yet it manages to upset everyone some of the time.

I sent that to one of my Turkish friends and replied with this:

And the funny thing (not funny but ironic maybe) is it seems people didn't like that mayor and were irritated sometime because "he was always too much by the book." Now I'm sure the people of that town are grateful to have a mayor like that.

It’s not surprising at all that the lack of accountability goes right to the top, and it’s tragic that it takes an earthquake to expose the corruption. But Turkey is far from the only country with a corrupt, ticking-time-bomb of construction and infrastructure quality issues. Pretty much every low-to-middle income country has taken the semi-rational approach of cutting corners in order to do more with less. And the high-income countries have arguably swung the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, with very high standards that lead to very high prices for construction of anything (and a few unfortunate places which enjoy the high price of high standards, and enough corruption to bypass these standards).

> Pretty much every low-to-middle income country has taken the semi-rational approach of cutting corners in order to do more with less.

For what it's worth, the "developed" Western countries have done just the same. Look at the fellow front page article about the train catastrophe in East Palestine or how virtually all companies got hit hard by supply chain interruptions - no matter if from Covid, the Ever Given or Ever Forward getting stuck, strikes, or whatever else tiny or small interruption, the key thing is that resilience aka stockpiles got out of fashion because they were seen as too expensive...

Cutting corners is an universal problem.

Yep. I've just seen an interview of a custom officer here in France. In the past 25 years the amount of foreign goods entering the country has more than doubled; in the meanwhile, the number of custom officers was slashed by 30% (in Germany it slightly increased in the same period). Illegal goods of all kinds (from toxic paints to non-conforming tools and drugs) are now everywhere. But the state saved money! In the short term at least...

So, it’s easy to be cynical here and point to examples of where high-income countries have had disasters, and from those data points conclude that everywhere is the same, but it really isn't the case that everywhere is the same. The fact we hear about failures, we see their political causes debated, and lawsuits filed, and root causes analyzed, and hands wrung in headlines… these are all symptoms of a system that is more or less working. These are the course-corrections and isolated incidents that serve to calibrate and revalidate that the accountability is there.

This is nothing like countries where corruption is endemic.

Witness Turkey’s recent arrests. What do we think is more likely: those contractors were the true root cause, and their arrests will prevent future building collapses during earthquakes? Or that they are merely the tip of a very large, very corrupt iceberg, and they will be made scapegoats to provide political cover that allows the rest of the system to quickly get back to business as usual?

I hate how people seem to act like a country of 350 million people and 20 trillion in GDP somehow can't afford a 10% safety factor on literally every single thing. How much money do we overwork ourselves to funnel into just a few owner's pockets, and they STILL bristle at the idea of giving the rest of us a minimum viable standard of living, as if having $100 billion spare is just not enough of a safety blanket.

Cars have a safety rating, I wonder if houses could have the same kind of rating?

Would it be a better situation if houses for sale/rent will have a transparent safety rating visible to tenants and contractors could choose whether they build expensive, high safety buildings, or cheaper, low safety buildings?

Might sound dystopian, but to me it seems like the preferable solution. I know I live in an old house that would probably not fit for an earthquake, but I also know that if I want to live in a safer house, I'd need to pay more or move to a less desirable location, so I'm OK with taking the risk that an earthquake will kill me while I'm in the house.

The question is whether the market could balance itself enough so contractors don't build just crappy houses and take all the new margin to themselves.

The safety standards are the rating. Someone can build a house for "better than code" and they can advertise that too, but a "rating" here would be the standard that for example a building with X floors needs to follow to ensure it's earthquake resistant, can bear at least Y amoung of weigth, resist to Z winds, etc. The mix of all these things are what become the building standards or "code".

Otherwise to do ratings like you suggest you can only do it to mass produced things, in this case the closest would be mobile homes or prefabs, since you can actually destroy it and see how difficult it was and give it a rating.

Indeed - you just need to look at the UK cladding scandal to see this.

I mean ffs:

    In the 1980s, the Conservative Government introduced its 
    Deregulation Initiative; in consequence, the Building Act 
    1984 reduced building regulations from 306 pages to 24.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_cladding_crisis

Indeed, apartment owners are facing millions in costs to put things right. That's not right, it should be on the developers who took advantage of this.

"Do more with less" is perfectly fine and rational.

"Do less with more and line my pockets along the way" is the problem.

If customers were _paying less_ for the substandard construction they're getting, okay that's one thing. But if customers are paying more, and they _think_ they're getting sturdy code-compliant construction, but contractors at one or more levels are skimming money and using substandard materials and techniques, then that's a corruption, enforcement, and auditing problem.

> "Do more with less" is perfectly fine and rational.

> ...

> If customers were _paying less_ for the substandard construction they're getting, okay that's one thing.

Not really. Customers are likely not in position to rationally make those kinds of trade-offs, and even if they were, there's a good chance they're not going to be the one to pay the price (e.g. they sell the home, and the purchaser N sales later dies because it collapsed due to the substandard construction).

Whether the buyers/victims are able to assess the situation or not don’t change the fact: they paid more for shoddier construction.

They might sell and move on but since this is a systemic issue, it’s very likely that their next residence has been built as shoddily and is just as dangerous.

> Whether the buyers/victims are able to assess the situation or not don’t change the fact: they paid more for shoddier construction.

I'm not disputing that's a problem, too. My only quibble is with the idea it's fine for people to knowingly choose substandard housing for some kind of discount.

I was just a teenager during 1988 Armenian earthquake that leveled entirety of city of Stepanakert (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_Armenian_earthquake) but I remember one of the most damning pictures on the TV and newspapers (even in USSR!) was a huge piece of load-bearing concrete from the collapsed panel building with "БРАК" (FAULTY or didn't pass QA) written on it in black marker/spray paint. Yet it was still used in the building. That earthquake was a significant part of political instability that contributed to USSR demise.

Spitak or Stepanakert?

If I remember correctly, Turkiyé (did I spel it write?) has always had a bunch of rolling heads, after buildings fall down like dominoes, during their frequent quakes.

Doesn't seem to have changed things.

Japan, on the other hand, seems to have a really hard-core construction ethos.

During quakes there, buildings rock around like they are at a rave, and don't fall down.

If we ever have a big quake in New York, we're screwed.

Well New York isn’t on an active fault line. I think California would fare pretty well, as much as can be expected after the big one.

I have heard that the issue with New York, is that we have this solid rock substrate, and the buildings are anchored directly to it.

In Japan, I have heard that the buildings actually have some kind of "shock absorber" structure, in their basements, and lots of counterweights.

Yes they are anchored to the schist substrate. The point I’m trying to make is you generally don’t build to account for earthquakes if you’re not on a fault line.

Active protection systems (big hydraulic dampers (passive and active)) and tuned mass dampers/diagonal dampers.

>as much as can be expected after the big one

It blows my mind to think that at some point in history the world's 2nd largest metro center (by GDP) is going to become rubble, and everyone knows about it, and we know it will happen for sure but there's not much that could be done but wait and see.

We don't know it will happen. The release of seismic stress can happen in many ways and we don't know enough to know anything for sure. A series of 7 or 8 quakes over a decade could relieve identified stresses to the point where a 9+ is put off for another 100+ years. After that even if statistically you can expect a major event "at some point" in the future, the damage from that event decreases with time as our building methods improve. Even today buildings are being built (in Tokyo) going up designed to withstand a 9.0 quake.

I’m close with someone who does inspections in both US and third world contexts. Apparently, the US pretty much complies with safety related building codes compared to many other places.

> quake in New York

Fwiw, I just now enjoyed "Local Geology of New York City and Its Effect on Seismic Ground Motions"(2004)[1]. There's also [2], less fun, but 2020, and has a more extensive soil map.

Briefly, NYC area has a moderate earthquake risk (a magnitude 5+ per century, two 6+ per thousand years), but "it is important to keep in mind that NYC buildings prior to 1995 were not designed at all for seismic loads"[2], and NYC surface is mostly class D medium-dense soil with glacial till and human fill.

[1] https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=261... [2] https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Konstantinos-Syngros/pu...

> "The problems lie in implementation and oversight"

This is a pattern that applies to every facet of human affairs: The declared "reality" differs from the implemented (real) reality. The key questions are only: by how much, and what happens when events force a comparison of these two "books": The one we choose to believe for expediency or profit versus the ground truth.

We can be fatalists and accept that this is "how things are". But that is not what history shows. Civilisation is a process of reconciling arbitrary, emotional, low-information, "fake realities" with objective, verified, cool-headed, facts about the state of the world. The closer we get to reconciling these books, the less we will suffer.

The only problem is that we can't emerge from our historical habits fast enough. Earthquakes, megafires, megafloods, virulent pandemics. How many wake up calls do we need? The game is over. We need to reboot to a better society.

This is a global problem: construction red tape and regulations are one of the most annoying and expensive to adhere to, and with real estate prices sky rocketing around the world the most tempting to cut corners on to dodge costs (they are also very difficult and expensive to inspect, unlike in restaurant business for example where it is quite easy to inspect that the kitchen is clean).

Take for example the Grenfell tower fire in London a few years ago, almost a 100 people burnt alive and it came down to the management company economising on external cladding (against regulation).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire

From what I've seen a major factor was the cladding manufacturer may have mislead architects regarding the validity of their testing and certification.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56101186

and

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56403431

> The BBA decided the evidence from the more successful European tests carried out on the Arconic cladding meant it "may be regarded" as having met the British standard. > > But the Board was never shown the class E ratings for the cassette version of the cladding and knew nothing about them until a BBC investigation in 2018. > > Arconic's president in France, Claude Schmidt, was forced to admit at the inquiry this would have "misled" anyone reading the certificate, including British architects.

Back around 1982 I visited New Zealand. Traveling around Auckland it was surprising to me to encounter so many unreinforced masonry buildings. I tried several times to ask politely what was being done about this problem and each time received a stern response along the lines of "Shut up and mind your own business, damned Yankee." Then in 2011 nearly 200 people were killed, mostly by those buildings which had stood as an obvious risk for decades.

Construction scams? More like government approved construction scams. In recent years, the Turkish government issued many exemptions for projects that were built or expanded in violation of the official buidling rules. For a small fine (which yielded the treasury almost three billion euros) they could do whatever they wanted, going against all requirements and obligations for safe building which is nature-disaster resistant.

For a small fine

We have a word for those "fines": they're called indulgences.

In a twist of fate, the Chamber of Civil Engineers building is one of the few that withstood the quake.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/10yw2...

That will only result is in conspiracy theories about why that happened.

I guess they had the forsight/experience to occasionally send one of their civil engineers to inspect the building site and make sure material and techniques were up to spec.

I think it's less about the foresight and more about being willing to spend the extra cash.

Shoddy construction is often cheaper, easier, or faster, those are the driving forces behind ignoring code. I doubt many engineers would choose to avoid the catastrophes they've been taught to avoid in their work, because they know better than anyone what the impact of such catastrophes will be.

There will always be bad people, but there are more constraints than just lack of skill or foresight that make these disasters unfold.

Reminds me of the famous pictures of a tori arch in Japan that survived nukes and earthquakes while its surroundings were repeatedly destroyed. Real trooper.

>is one of the few that withstood the quake.

but in that picture, you can plainly see a bunch of other buildings in the background that also have "withstood" the quake?

> but in that picture, you can plainly see a bunch of other buildings in the background that also have "withstood" the quake?

Well the OP title is actually "...with almost no damage," which is not something you could tell from a distance in picture. Also, presumably, not every building in town failed to follow the building codes.

But in any case, that's nitpicking that misses the point: a building which presumably closely followed the building codes got through with little to no damage.

Dogfooding is a thing. And its known to work.

If anything, the Turkiye government are dodging the finger of blame. The fault lies with the politicians for not stamping down hard on developers who flout building regulations and/or allowing them to construct buildings with a 'waiver' that lets them get away with substandard building.

"The fault" isn't some finite and indivisible thing that needs to be assigned to only one group of people. Politicians are at fault for not cracking down on scammers, and the scammer contractors are also at fault for being scammers. One does not diminish the other, stop thinking of fault as zero sum.

But if it isn't politician's head on the line they won't do shit

I disagree. It is the Government's responsibility to its people to ensure buildings remain safe during earthquakes. If their building regulations are not being obeyed then it is their job to enforce it. It is their responsibility.

In the third world, building contractors collude with politicians and bureaucrats. This is a mutually reinforcing mechanism.

Now I realize why it's called a fault line.

While it's not zero sum, government policies create competitive pressure, potentially creating a situation where only scammers can compete.

Heavily fining the whole industry and using the money to finance new companies being created would likely still be a better policy than letting them off the hook though.

> Construction amnesties, which allow owners to register unlicensed properties or ones that violate building codes in exchange for a fine, have made a bad situation much worse. Mr Erdogan’s government passed several such amnesties, the latest in 2018, ahead of general elections. The opposition backed the move, because it was popular with voters. The government reaped the political dividends, while millions of property owners ended up paying into state coffers and assuming the risk. A year after the 2018 amnesty, Mr Erdogan appeared in Kahramanmaras, proudly announcing that the programme “had solved the problems” of 144,000 of the city’s residents

Building codes of course are written by blood and shall be followed.

But looking on that photo... You see bunch of vertically standing "levers" around. With their own resonance frequencies. Dynamic of their vibrations is quite complex. They may amplify effect in some places. Effect of standing wave and the like.

But that's also about building codes I believe.

Just out of interest for the layman, is there anything a non-expert like myself can examine on a building to assess its 'survivability' during an earthquake?

The examples in the linked article are reinforced concrete structure that were missing their steel reinforcement. So... no, not really, unless you have an xray setup or whatever. This is precisely why we have building codes and certified inspectors to sign off on construction projects.

While x-ray is not accessible, for this specific risk one could use some cheap induction-based metal detector to spot-check the presence of rebar within walls.

Is it more than 1 story?

Then run, don't walk, away.

Don't do tall buildings in seismic zones without the benefit of an incredible amount of engineering practice, inspections, audits, and enforcement. If you suspect the locals are corrupt, your safest place during an earthquake is a straw hut or reasonable facsimile thereof.

Japanese and Taiwanese buildings taller than a single story seem to fare fine.

I'm assuming that is answered mostly by the second paragraph OP wrote that you seemed to miss:

>[. . .] without the benefit of an incredible amount of engineering practice, inspections, audits, and enforcement.

Is there an independent international body which inspects and reports on building standards noncompliance?

Even a stratified random sample of a few dozen buildings per country (based on location, size and cost of development) would likely reveal any evidence of systematic failures

It would be a nightmare to establish something like this as every country's laws and building standards are different. I do feel like this is bordering on a human rights issue however (right to life, adequate - nonlife-threatening housing)

This is tangental but a similar idea (somewhat) works for ensuring less developed Commonwealth nations conduct voting properly. Developed Commonwealth nations setup Commonwealth Observer Groups (COGs) who sample voting places and occasionally provide security such as the recent PNG elections

It won't matter.

Things will not change.

Some empty gesture will take place to assuage the outrage but nothing will change.

Bets are open on who will be scapegoated for this.

Only one person should ever take the blame for this. The guy who "lost" billions of dollars from the earthquake fund is the same guy who could have enforced stricter building codes.

It's time for the people of Turkey to make their voices heard.

Turkiye, if you please. Turkeys are best enjoyed on the dinner table.

When she was little, my daughter was looking at a globe once and thought it was hilarious that Greece was on top of Turkey - "I don't like greasy turkey, but if that's your thing..."

It’s a good thing the government of Turkey didn’t collect an Earthquake Tax on its citizens since 1999 and then do precisely nothing whatsoever regarding earthquake reinforcing or regulation or inspections.

I'm sure there's a whole chain of broken links and enough blame to share around, but as an engineer, I have to ask why we sometimes forget that we, as doctors, are also bound by a creed, which says (among other things, depending on the version), that we place service before profit, and the welfare of the public above all other considerations and that we'll "practice our profession conscientiously, with dignity, and in accordance with the highest ethical and professional standards". Am I too naive to still believe in this?

The problem is that even with the codes properly, you can not escape past sins. In particular, illegal waste dumps from the 60s, 70s, who just have been bulldozed over and build upon. They lead to liquidification under stress (large buildings or small earth quakes. And even the best up to code building will not withstand stresses outside of the spec (tilt by 30 degrees + shake).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquefaction

Its very scary and in particular near old city borders in the 70s its acute. https://earthquake.usgs.gov/hazards/urban/sfbay/liquefaction...

Preparations: Not alot you can do. Brainstorm and placebos.Lifeslides and ziplines. I dunno. I provide awareness and anlysis. No solutions.

"There’s no reinforced steel here,” she says, “so the concrete lost its strength and the columns collapsed, along with the floors, as soon as the ground started to shake.”"

"'The problem lies in implementation and oversight'" of building codes that are strict on paper.

That's unbelievable.

I was expecting to learn that marginal corners had been cut ... best practices had not been followed, etc.

But concrete high rise superstructure without steel reinforcement (like rebar) is beyond the pale.

How could you even construct that and escape notice (and alarm!) from passersby ? How could you silence (every single worker at the site) ?

Thank god Turkey doesn’t have nuclear power plants:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_earthquake_vulne...

They actually have the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant but I think it is not completed yet. However it was very close to the areas affected.

OMG! If something is a bad idea, Russia is not far away:

"In May 2010, Russia and Turkey signed an agreement that a subsidiary of Rosatom would build, own, and operate a power plant at Akkuyu comprising four 1,200 MWe VVER1200 units." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkuyu_Nuclear_Power_Plant)

Metsamor plant checks that box since it's only 10 miles to the border: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/110412-mo...

Taking the other side of the scam coin there are construction projects that are over engineered out of all sense of proportion simply to increase the budget and associated flow throughs like skimming or powerbase increases etc. And that's operating under the assumption the project is useful at all in the first place which is by no means a forgone conclusion especially in contrast to other possible devotions of time and energy.

To be fair to Turkey's builders - 800 year old castles in the quake zone were completely destroyed. So this was a once in a thousand years event basically, otherwise the castles would have been destroyed long ago. Very very hard to plan for this kind of thing.

A lot of historical monuments have been significantly reconstructed or periodically reinforced so this doesn't necessarily follow.

if you have visited turkey once, you already knew the buildings were built on wet sand. plenty of construction going on - but done badly. seen this everywhere from istanbul to antlaya. some countries in asia suffer the same problem as well.

Libertarians: this is why we have building codes. We don't need builders cutting corners and harming people years down the road, because profit convinced them that was the right thing to do for their own interests.

Why were the people living in that house so greedy that they cheeped out on buying/renting housing? There is soundly built housing in Turkey. If they were rich enough to buy sturdier housing then they could have done that.

I'm not pointing this out to blame those people in any way, but it may be legitimately they can't afford better housing and this is the best they could do and the risk of dying in an earthquake was better than their alternatives. Maybe sturdier housing everywhere would mean some those people would have been dead long ago from exposure.

You're assuming the people affected did some kind of rational cost/benefit analysis, and just whatever choice they made was worth the chance of people dying. I very much doubt that was the case. You also seem to be falsely assuming there's only three options: be rich, live in a death trap, or be homeless on the street. That's not the case.

People can be tricked, be stupid, just have bad ideas, or similar. Building codes are a check against all that. And if they make a certain class of housing more expensive, there are always alternatives of other classes of housing.

Corruption doesn’t make things cheaper. Shoddy housing most likely costs the same as up to code housing, especially since you can’t tell if it complies or not (hard to see the rebar embedded in the concrete or its absence)

See the market for lemons.

> Why were the people living in that house so greedy that they cheeped out on buying/renting housing?

Can you please point out in the article where it states these occupants knowingly purchased/rented a structurally compromised home? Because the article I read does not state this.

Don't say foolish things before reading the article.

That they purchased/rented a structurally compromised home is self-evident from the news articles showing the post-earthquake rubble. They certainly may have not known it was compromised (never claimed they did), but they sure as hell didn't know it was sound (probably because they either could not afford reputable inspection or even if they could didn't have the money to afford sound housing.)

Do we have building codes in the US?

Does anybody know what they are?

Does anybody know if builders are required to follow them?

yes, yes, and yes

Here's a good place to start: https://codecheck.com/code-adoption-by-state/

Just because some building codes have a good purpose doesn't mean all building codes do. On another forum there was recently a long discussion about the requirement for x number of power outlets in hallways of single family homes. This was added when wall-to-wall carpeting was fashionable and people in homes without outlets in the hallways were using extension cords so their vacuum cleaners could reach all of the carpet. The theory was that it kept people from tripping over excessively long cord or from daisy chaining together too many extension cords. Is this something that should be legally mandated for everyone? Especially since wall-to-wall carpeting has fallen out of fashion, robotic floor cleaners exist, as do much lighter, often battery powered, canister vacuums.

The cost of wiring up a hallway and putting in some outlets is only a small fraction of the cost of a new house but when you have dozens and dozens of these types of requirements, it does drive up the cost for a benefit that exists at a much lower level than when the requirements was added.

One of the suggestions was that if a homeowner didn't like the requirements, they could petition the authors of the International Residential Code for an amendment during the next release of the code manual in three years. This sounds reasonable to bureaucratic authoritarians but isn't something an individual should be required to go through just because they're not interested in living in a 1970s shag carpeted retro wonderland.

Yes, codes do become outdated, but this works both ways.

There is an opposite example to your hallway carpet example: many old bathrooms were not required to have outlets because there were not many mains powered bathing accessories, but now there have been multiple instances of people being electrocuted when running extension cords from other rooms into the bathroom to use.

Really, if we had outlets everywhere that met the best safety standards possible -- we'd prevent all of these issues, in any time. But we don't do this because people want to save money.

> On another forum there was recently a long discussion about the requirement for x number of power outlets in hallways of single family homes. This was added when wall-to-wall carpeting was fashionable...

> Is this something that should be legally mandated for everyone? Especially since wall-to-wall carpeting has fallen out of fashion...

That's a bizarre argument. Anyone who knows about fashions knows that 1) what goes out of fashion, often comes back into fashion again, 2) fashions aren't universally followed. Unless building codes were changed to forbid carpeted hallways, I don't see any good rationale for eliminating the code requirements for them. America isn't Japan, it's quite reasonable to assume someone will likely put carpet in that hallway at a later date (anecdote: I personally know people who have pulled out carpet and found hardwood floors underneath).

Also you're focusing too much one one rationale. Those outlets are also very useful for night lights. Falling isn't usually a big deal for younger people, but it can be very serious for older people.

If you want to call out a silly building code at least stay relevant and list one which is structural. Otherwise this outlet discussion is meaningless in the context of structural design.

Turkiye had building codes. But a corrupt government didn't enforce them.

Non-libertarians: this is exactly why we never trust governments with our lives. Free markets would eventually find a cost-effective solution but governments will only manage to instill a false sense of security with promises and lies while happily taking our money with both hands.

> Free markets would eventually find a cost-effective solution

The facts would seem to disagree with this assumption.

The actual history proves my point though.

Really? I'd love to hear some historical examples of how an unregulated market achieved a high standard of construction to protect against an irregular event.

>Free markets would eventually find a cost-effective solution

Yeah Norfolk Southern really showed the dang gubmint how it's done. Raise your glass of contaminated Ohio River water to private enterprise!

How many benefitted from cheaper and more accessible housing as a result of the lax enforcement of building codes? I remain unconvinced that obscenely strict building codes are a net-positive.

That doesn't matter because earthquake deaths are big and obvious and a bunch of homeless Turks/Kurds dying on the streets doesn't attract news. People see "house fall, housing bad" and then demand safer construction so the death will be hidden elsewhere.

"bunch of homeless Turks/Kurds dying on the streets"

Is that common in Turkey? It rather sounds like an American extrapolating from the situation on the Tenderloin.

In the Muslim world, extended families tend to stick together more than in the West and provide their members with some safety net. Your crazy uncle will have just a cot in a small side room, but won't be left alone in the street to fend for himself.

I am extrapolating from living in Rojava, which is as close as I can get to Turkey without getting executed.

Is non-war-related homelessness common in Rojava?

As far as my knowledge of the Muslim world goes, families seem to stick together way more than in Europe and won't simply let one of their own in the street.

I don't think the war can reliably be separated from the issue anywhere in the Turkey/Syria/Iraq region, but I saw some desperate housing on the outskirts of Qamishlo. I don't see how requiring sturdy housing would make the situation any better, as many families simply cannot afford it.

Also the Kurds, who are a big portion of inhabitants in South Turkey, tend to be less religious in general than residents of many of the ME countries. Plenty of non-muslims, orphans, etc.

"tend to be less religious"

That is what I have heard too, but family/society patterns tend to linger for a generation or two after the religiosity has subsided.

Czechia, where I live, has only about 13 per cent of self-declared Christians, but the main Christian holidays such as Easter and Christmas are still almost universally observed. The trace is still strong, even though the religious core has mostly evaporated.

"I don't see how requiring sturdy housing would make the situation any better, as many families simply cannot afford it."

I am not certain that the bad housing was actually much cheaper when sold than it would be if the codes were at least somewhat respected. People who do this kind of shady stuff will still try to sell at the highest possible market prices.

This is a notorious problem in China: very expensive apartments of horrible quality. Once a few crooks coordinate with the corrupt officials to capture the local market, you don't have much choice but to accept their conditions or go pound sand.

Yeah I totally acknowledge cultural aspects associated with religion live on. Of course your family has to have a place to invite the family in anyways, which they may or may not be able to afford the code house.

Corruption is another factor at play, but they can be confounding factors. This is evident when you see even SELF-BUILT homes often have to follow codes -- what is the owner supposed to be defrauding himself or something? Code are precisely why I haven't built my own home due to restrictions on minimum sq ft etc where I live as I could easily afford land and to build a house but not an up to code house so I'm stuck renting and losing lots more money in the process. And corruption cuts both ways -- giving more power and rules to zoning enforcement just gives opportunity for corruption to live with the zoning enforcement whereas having no zoning means no zoning enforcement people to corrupt.

In US code enforcement has initiated action to destroy tiny homes for homeless people etc which explicitly shows these people exposed to the elements as a result of code.

As for China, despite significant 'party' corruption, they have one of the highest family owned house ownership rates in the world, far surpassing US and Czechia. I would be very happy for us to have policies that end with such egalitarian home ownership.

I don't think it is absurd to require self-built homes to conform to universal codes. Builders-owners are the first inhabitants, but not necessarily the only ever inhabitants. Some other person/family may be living in them 5, 10 or 20 years from now, and having documentation that the original owner didn't cut corners when building the object reduces the "lemon market asymmetry" during the purchase process that is otherwise almost intractable.

CZ has about 78 per cent home ownership, China has 88. I am not sure whether the difference is so significant; it may reflect underlying differences in population migration (e.g. a lot of young Czechs go study to the traditional universities in Prague, Brno or Olomouc that are far from their family homes and obviously rent their rooms while there; maybe Chinese youngsters mostly study in their own city). We also have about 7 per cent of foreigners who are often transient and don't feel the need to buy any real estate; China doesn't.

OK so let me build the house and post the ~$10k bond to demolish the house once I'm dead. Since in my case the alternative is no new house at all it'd be back to where we started after I'm dead and in the meantime the place I'm renting opens up to someone else.

The handwaving about market asymmetry or whatever we all know is moving the goalposts from the corruption you were talking about earlier and easily bypassed anyway by posting a bond to demolish the house upon death/sale or other mechanisms like documentation of deviations or posting bond for special inspections upon transfer. In practice there's a place a few counties over from me that DOES do self-certification where they completely look the other way and all the crazy fears you have, haven't come to fruition and you can even transfer those houses unencumbered.

They're dead and buried under rubble, but before that at least they saved a little money on rent. Sounds like a pretty bad trade-off to me.

"obscenely strict building codes are a net-positive"

Context matters and Turkey is a notorious earthquake area. What might be tolerable in Lithuania is criminal on an active fault line.

You haven't even demonstrated that the apartments were actually cheaper for the customers. They were cheaper to build, but their price was probably determined by the market and the notorious informational asymmetry, and the money saved by cheating might have been split between the developers and the crooked officials.

It is entirely possible that people paid through their nose for housing that would later kill them. If you look at the Chinese market, the "tou-fou dreg" buildings still command a premium price.

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