{"id":13616,"date":"2023-04-21T13:23:41","date_gmt":"2023-04-21T18:23:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.imegcorp.com\/?post_type=news_events&p=13616"},"modified":"2023-05-09T09:23:15","modified_gmt":"2023-05-09T14:23:15","slug":"imeg-engineer-on-visit-to-turkey-it-was-humbling-and-eye-opening","status":"publish","type":"news_events","link":"https:\/\/www.imegcorp.com\/news_events\/imeg-engineer-on-visit-to-turkey-it-was-humbling-and-eye-opening\/","title":{"rendered":"IMEG engineer on visit to Turkey: \u2018It was humbling and eye-opening’\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"
Parth Gudhka, an IMEG Project Engineer who holds a Master of Science degree from UCLA focused in structural\/earthquake engineering, spent six days in late March in southern Turkey, where two large earthquakes struck the area and neighboring Syria. Parth traveled with members of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI)<\/span><\/i> as part of the organization\u2019s Learning from Earthquakes program. He talks about the experience in the following Q&A.\u00a0<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
Q: <\/span><\/b>What type of work did you do in Turkey, and how did you get involved?<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
A: <\/span><\/b>We were in the field for six days, staying in Adana and Gaziantep and going around looking at the affected areas. My focus as a part of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) team was to look at buildings. We were able to take a closer look at approximately 150 buildings with varying levels of damage in 13 affected towns and cities. The government estimates 60,000 buildings collapsed and another 100,000 are heavily damaged. There were other teams that looked at hospitals, lifelines (infrastructure), and a team of geotechnical researchers.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
At least 50 percent of heavily damaged buildings were still standing, not yet demolished. We worked with local professors, who helped us identify the buildings suitable for structural investigation and navigate the affected areas safely. We made observations from outside and would sometimes enter the buildings if it was safe to get inside. Our primary goal was to collect data on the damage sustained by buildings by identifying the failure modes and investigating construction quality and practices to study the performance of buildings during the earthquakes.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n