ETEK, the Cyprus Scientific and Technical Chamber, has sent a letter to the Public Works Department calling for urgent safety checks on buildings, starting with those in use by the public.
The recent devastating earthquakes affecting Turkey and Syria serve as a stark reminder of the serious risk faced by Cyprus’ ageing stock of buildings from earthquakes and severe weather events.
It was only in 1994 that the law on mandatory anti-seismic surveys was passed. In 1999 project supervision was mandated and finally, in 2012, the Eurocodes for the Design of structures for earthquake resistance were adopted into law.
Speaking with the Philelftheros, the president of ETEK, Constantinos Constanti, said “I do not claim that an earthquake similar to the one in Turkey will occur, nor should we panic the world, but we must check and strengthen the buildings so that when a large earthquake occurs, the losses, whether they are human or building, are limited to the minimum possible.”
Based on the information released by the Statistical Service in 2019, 204,455 buildings (out of the 431,059 registered) were constructed before the law on mandatory anti-seismic surveys was passed in 1994; of those 13,037 houses were built before 1945 and are more than 78 years old.
Speaking to Rosie Charalambous on the Cyprus News Digest – February 17 podcast, Platonas Stylianou of ETEK said that:
“The problem according to our studies in ETEK is mainly about the old buildings; the existing building stock that is aging and lacks modern construction standards and techniques.
“But it’s mostly because it lacks maintenance and because we don’t have the culture in Cyprus of maintaining and fixing our buildings. That is why in ETEK we have created building visual inspection forms to enable civil engineers to help ensure that the basic requirements to protect the building’s user are met.”
Currently, the owner of the building that has to request the inspection, but ETEK is trying to get regular inspections enforced by law.
The maintenance and repair of the 30,000 jointly-owned buildings are a particular problem as their owners do not always agree to carry out the necessary maintenance work or their anti-seismic strengthening. (Poor design and construction techniques can exacerbate maintenance issues.)
Just in the last year, a fifth-floor balcony collapsed in an old apartment block in Limassol and two balconies in Paphos collapsed leaving seven people injured, four of them seriously.
Cyprus lies in a secondary earthquake zone and experiences frequent minor tremors. The aftershocks of the earthquakes that devastated parts of Turkey and Syria were felt at eastern end of the island. There were no reports of damage or injuries.