East Aleppo’s Damaged Buildings Risk Collapse Amid Neglect

Thousands of people in eastern Aleppo city live in buildings officially classified as being at risk of collapse. Despite repeated warnings, the lack of alternatives and the high cost of rent have forced many people to go on living in buildings that lack basic structural safety. With the economy continuing to deteriorate, and as officials offer no evacuation or housing support plans, many formerly displaced families have returned to buildings that were previously evacuated.

Regular follow-up on the issue of damaged buildings is not a priority of local authorities in Aleppo due to a shortage of technical staff and limited resources. An engineer in the City Council’s Projects Department said the council’s current efforts are focused on providing housing for displaced people and returnees, rather than on removing or structurally assessing dangerous buildings. He added that there are not enough engineering teams to cover the city’s 10 administrative sectors, while the council’s attention is mainly directed towards monitoring new builds and controlling recent unlicensed construction, which is reported by neighbourhood mukhtars.

The risks to buildings in eastern Aleppo stem from several causes: the damage inflicted during years of war, the cracks and soil weakening caused by the February 2023 earthquake, and the deterioration wrought by sewage and water networks that leak into the foundations, weakening them over time. The neighbourhoods of Al-Sukkari, Al-Maghayir, Bustan Al-Qasr, Al-Jazmati, and Karm Al-Jabal are among the most affected areas of the city. They suffered intense shelling during the battles between Assad regime forces and opposition factions from 2012 to 2016, leaving deep structural damage that remains to this day.

The statistics adopted by the Aleppo City Council remain the same as those compiled before the fall of the Assad regime, without any updates reflecting the changes that occurred after thousands of displaced people returned to the damaged neighbourhoods. With no updated maps identifying high-risk areas, the local administration’s work is limited to allowing minor internal repairs within informally constructed buildings that fall inside the urban plan. These include simple works such as replacing water and electricity networks, tiling, and painting. Such permits are granted after submitting documents and engineering reports proving structural safety, yet these procedures neither change the structure of those buildings nor grant them any legal status, remaining temporary solutions that conceal the inability to address the ongoing danger.

Safety committees in previous governorate councils had recorded more than 1,500 buildings at risk of collapse in informal and unregulated areas, as a result of the widespread destruction in the eastern districts during the war. After the February 2023 earthquake, hundreds more buildings were added to the danger list – 306 of them requiring immediate demolition, and 2,287 in need of reinforcement, including more than 1,000 in Old Aleppo alone. The previous City Council demolished 51 of the dangerous buildings after the earthquake and formed 11 sub-safety committees to assess structures in the city’s ten service sectors. However, most of their reports were not implemented due to a lack of funding and the inability to provide alternative housing for affected residents.

The current Aleppo City Council has been criticised for failing to activate the service sectors to perform their role in addressing both old and new building violations, as well as for the weak performance of the public safety committees responsible for monitoring buildings at risk of collapse, said the engineer working at the council. In many cases, the council has shirked responsibility for demolishing dangerous buildings, delegating the task to Civil Defence teams. Its activity has been limited to studying emergency response projects for the eastern neighbourhoods related to rehabilitating water, sewage, and road networks, without setting a clear timeline for their implementation.

In neighbourhoods such as Al-Sukkari, Al-Jazmati, Al-Salihin, and Al-Maadi, residents live in ground-floor apartments or dilapidated vacant flats without any engineering reinforcement, often without the knowledge or consent of the original owners. As living conditions worsen and rents rise, residing in such buildings has become a last choice preferred over homelessness, despite full awareness of the risk of dying under the rubble.

There are no official statistics on the number of returnees to Aleppo’s eastern neighbourhoods. Some local estimates put the number as high as 300,000 since the fall of the Assad regime, although UNHCR estimated the total number of returnees for the Aleppo governorate as of September 25 at 163,000. Many of them live in damaged homes that they have partially restored, without addressing structural safety issues such as cracked pillars or weakened foundations. Most repair work has been limited to improving the interior appearance of homes with paint, doors, windows, and water and electricity connections, in the absence of any engineering supervision or official funding for proper reconstruction.

With no funding from official or international bodies, returnees to eastern Aleppo rely on limited initiatives implemented by local associations to improve their housing conditions. Residents report that partial collapses occur repeatedly without any effective response from the City Council, whose interventions are usually confined to removing debris or blocking roads around the collapsed buildings. In October this year, a five-storey building collapsed in the Bustan Al-Basha neighbourhood, while two people were killed in a partial collapse in the Qastal Harami area. Meanwhile, the safety committees merely issue warning reports that are never translated into practical measures, due to the lack of funding for evacuation or reinforcement. As a result, building collapses have become a familiar scene, reinforcing residents’ sense of helplessness and despair.