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Tremors in Salamieh and Lessons Learned from the 2023 Earthquake

17-09-2024/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

The Hama governorate experienced several seismic tremors in August, the strongest of which occurred shortly after midnight on August 11 and 12, registering 5.3 on the Richter scale. The epicentre was in the village of Tal Al-Durra, near Salamieh, approximately 30 kilometres east of Hama. While these tremors did not result in the collapse of residential buildings, they caused material damage and cracks in homes.

As the tremor exceeded 5 on the Richter scale, Syria’s National Earthquake Centre classified it as an earthquake, and determined that it occurred at a depth of 10 kilometres beneath the surface. These tremors were reportedly caused by movements in the Palmyrene tectonic plate due to accumulated subterranean stress, with geological experts stating that they were indirectly linked to the February 6, 2023 earthquake.

Dozens of people were taken to Salamieh hospitals with fractures and bruises, mostly from jumping out of windows or falling while descending stairs. A local correspondent for The Syria Report noted that emergency teams from the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) set up tents and organised public shelters in parks immediately after the earthquake. Many affected in Salamieh are currently waiting for the AKDN to announce a programme to repair and reinforce their properties. They do not expect much support from the municipality, given its limited budget and its inability to handle tasks such as garbage collection and water supply to residents. The AKDN operates in several regions of Syria, particularly in areas inhabited by the Ismaili community. Salamieh’s population is estimated at around 200,000, most of whom are Ismailis.

Hama Governor Maen Sobhi told the semi-official newspaper Al-Watan on August 28 that the governorate had taken measures to address the impact of the tremors in Salamieh and its surrounding countryside, aiming to mitigate their damage. These measures included forming a public safety committee to inspect damaged buildings and increasing the readiness of disaster response institutions.

In a statement to the official news agency SANA, Salamieh City Council Chairwoman Souhad Zaidan explained that the public safety committee began its work the day after the earthquake. Additionally, the council formed a team of 39 engineers to assess the structural safety of the affected buildings. Mrs Zaidan noted that the council was coordinating with economic and civil organisations to provide alternative rental housing for the affected residents, with rent covered for a full year.

The governor told Al-Watan that 475 homes were damaged by the tremors across Hama Governorate, with 37 needing full evacuation and 152 requiring reinforcement and repairs. However, these figures are not compatible with what the chairwoman of the city council stated in the same article, published on August 28. She noted that the Salamieh city council had received over 900 requests for inspections in the city and had inspected around 750 homes. Of these, 38 percent (285 homes) were found to be safe but in need of minor repairs, 53 percent (398 homes) required reinforcement and repairs, and over 8.5 percent (64 homes) needed to be evacuated and demolished.

A correspondent for The Syria Report highlighted that the discrepancies in the figures given by officials could be seen as an attempt to exaggerate the damage in order to attract support from donor organisations. This appears to be one of the lessons learned by Syrian state institutions following the February 6, 2023 earthquake.

In the same statement to Al-Watan, the governor of Hama called on international donors to help repair the water and sewage systems in Salamieh and its surrounding countryside, and to improve wells and pumping networks to address the severe water crisis, despite the issue being unrelated to the August 12 earthquake. Salamieh and its surrounding areas are suffering from severe drought, with water sources such as wells and springs drying up. As a result, farming in the region has shifted to rain-fed agriculture due to the scarcity of irrigation water. Drinking water is pumped according to a strict rationing schedule, with supplies available for only a few hours every three days. Most residents are forced to buy drinking water from unregulated sources, sold via mobile tankers. The main water network is deteriorating due to lack of maintenance and failure to implement new projects in this sector.

Additionally, one municipal official told The Syria Report that most of the buildings in Salamieh classified as dangerous and in need of demolition were at risk of collapse even before the August 12 earthquake. This is often because the municipality did not issue renovation permits (officially known as reinforcement and partial rebuilding permits) for them. The refusal to grant renovation permits is due to two main reasons: either these buildings are not licensed and have unresolved building violations under Law No. 40 of 2012, with the municipality refusing to reconcile and instead calling for their demolition, or inheritance disputes prevent the subdivision of some properties, making it impossible to issue renovation permits. Most of these homes are old, some are made of mud, and a portion of them are abandoned.

Some of the homes classified as at risk of collapse after the August 12 earthquake were already marked for demolition. The municipality has been demanding their removal for years, as they were built without permits in areas designated for urban expansion west of the city under the expansion of the city’s zoning plan. The owners of these properties refuse to vacate them without compensation, particularly because the municipality has previously evicted and demolished some buildings there without compensating the residents. One such building is located near the branch office of the ruling Baath Party in the city, and the municipality wants to remove it because its location obstructs the expansion of a major road.

Profile: Museum District in Kobani

06-08-2024/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

In 2013, the Kurdish-led People’s Protection Units (YPG) took control of the city of Kobani (also known as Ayn Al-Arab) in the Aleppo governorate, located near the Syrian-Turkish border. Just a year later, in 2014, ISIS seized the city. Following fierce battles and a prolonged siege, the YPG, supported by the Global Coalition Against Daesh, expelled the ISIS fighters from the city in January 2015. Many parts of the city suffered significant damage, especially the Customs neighbourhood, an old area with narrow streets covering about 15 hectares, located just 200 metres from the Turkish-Syrian border.

In May 2015, Kurdish-led authorities in the northeast announced their intention to preserve this neighbourhood as it is, without rebuilding it, to serve as a testament to the “resistance and victory” over ISIS. A specialised committee called the “Kobani Reconstruction Coordination” was formed, emerging from a conference held by the Kobani Canton Authority. On June 25, 2015, the committee began receiving claims from affected property owners in the city, including approximately 300 owners in the Customs neighbourhood alone, to assess their claims and provide compensation.

At the end of 2015, the Real Estate Documentation Office of the Municipalities Authority, part of the Autonomous Administration, issued a decision listing all the affected property owners, which was ratified by the Kobani Canton Presidency. Compensation for those affected in the Customs neighbourhood involved allocating them plots of land equivalent in size to their damaged properties. These new plots are public property in a zoned area west of Kobani, now known as New Kobani District. The decision of the Municipalities Authority, ratified by the Kobani Canton, along with property allocation documents, are considered ownership documents for the new plots, allowing owners to manage and sell them.

In January 2016, the affected owners began building their new homes or commercial shops in the New Kobani District. A source from the AANES told The Syria Report that more than 20 percent of the affected property owners sold their allocated plots in New Kobani, aiming to emigrate, particularly to Europe.

The New Kobani District, located on the Aleppo-Kobani road, was, before the conflict, the site of the local livestock market (bazaar) and has a small cemetery. The site is still registered as state-owned land in the Land Record of the Damascus government.

In 2019, the old Customs neighbourhood was fenced off and designated as a military museum by the Autonomous Administration, becoming known as the Museum District. This decision faced opposition from local residents whose properties had completely collapsed. These property owners had only received plots of land ready for construction as compensation and did not receive any financial support to help them build new homes, as the damage to their properties was considered war damage.

In contrast, property owners whose buildings were partially damaged in the old Customs neighbourhood and could be rehabilitated received, in addition to the construction-ready plots in the New Kobani District, a monetary compensation to help them build on it. This led those whose properties had collapsed to object to the initial compensation. They eventually received financial compensation that allowed them to build new homes, with some even receiving building materials free of charge.

Tallying the Damages from the February 6 Earthquake

07-03-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

During a March 2 meeting chaired by the Minister of Local Administration and Environment, Syria’s Higher Relief Committee stated that the earthquake had impacted 414,304 people in Syria.

The committee added that 4,444 buildings were unsafe for return and could not be reinforced, while 29,751 buildings needed reinforcement work to be safe. There were 30,113 buildings deemed safe but needing maintenance work and 292 buildings that had been demolished to protect public safety. This survey was conducted in coordination with structural safety teams and technical assistance committees.

During a parliamentary session on February 20, the Minister of Local Administration and Environment said that 199 buildings collapsed during the earthquake.

The affected governorates

It appears from the figures reported by each governorate separately that the number of damaged buildings at risk of collapse is vast and is incommensurate with the number of buildings that collapsed at the moment of the earthquake and that their total is greater than the numbers reported by the Higher Relief Committee. It is also difficult to precisely determine whether all these buildings were damaged by the February 6 earthquake or had suffered previous damages.

Aleppo

The semi-official Al-Watan newspaper published a report on February 27 about the Higher Relief Committee’s branch in Aleppo governorate, stating that the body had examined 11,277 buildings. Of those, 8,600 were deemed structurally sound, while 2,677 were structurally unsound due to the earthquake.

In a February 19 press conference, the Aleppo governorate stated that 53 buildings had collapsed due to the earthquake; The Syria Report found that 50 buildings were located in formerly opposition-held parts of east Aleppo city and many were uninhabited and already at risk of collapse. The other three collapsed buildings were old and in poor condition and located in central Aleppo city. No building collapses were recorded in the city’s western neighbourhoods, which remained relatively protected from armed conflict during the war.

Before the earthquake, most of the buildings that risked falling in Aleppo had previously been damaged by fighting. In November 2022, the Aleppo City Council demolished some of the 1,500 buildings at risk of collapse. These buildings had faced regime bombing damage during the period of opposition control over that part of the city in 2012-2016.

Lattakia

In a March 2 press conference by the Relief Operations Room in Lattakia governorate, the governor said that 27,641 buildings had been inspected. Some 967 buildings had been completely damaged and could not undergo reinforcement work.

According to preliminary official figures issued in the first days after the quake, around 50 buildings in the Lattakia governorate collapsed fully and another 50 buildings partially. On February 14, The Syria Report wrote that at least 50 buildings in the governorate had fully collapsed, including at least 16 in Lattakia city alone.

Hama

According to the Hama branch of the Higher Relief Committee and its operations room, by February 27, the governorate had inspected 38,000 homes and shops. Of those, 2,000 buildings were at risk of collapse and required evacuation. Many buildings were deemed safe but had cracks and needed restoration work.

These numbers appear quite extensive and don’t match the only four buildings recorded to have collapsed in Hama during the earthquake. Two of those buildings were in Hama city, one of which was uninhabited, while the other two were in the rural part of the governorate. One apparent explanation is that the Hama governorate classified all buildings that failed to meet structural safety standards as buildings that were damaged in the quake.

Tartous

A source in Tartous governorate told Al-Watan on February 28 that engineering teams had, to date, inspected 4,000 buildings. Of those buildings, 117 were homes that needed to be demolished and 587 needed reinforcement.

Dozens of old homes had partially collapsed in the area around Al-Qadmous Castle due to the earthquake. Other homes in the main souk of Baniyas city also faced damage.

Residential Building Collapses in Kurdish-controlled Aleppo Neighbourhood

31-01-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

In the early morning on January 22, a building collapsed in east Aleppo’s Al-Sheikh Maqsoud neighbourhood, killing 18 residents. Though the building was newly constructed, it was not properly licensed and lacked structural integrity.

Al-Sheikh Maqsoud and neighbouring Ashrafieh are under the military control of the majority-Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). The People’s Municipality, a part of the Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (AANES), provides public services to the two neighbourhoods. The rest of Aleppo city is controlled by regime forces and allied militias. It receives public services from the government’s Aleppo City Council, which operates under the Ministry of Local Administration and Environment.

Regime military checkpoints surround the YPG-held areas in Al-Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh, sometimes enforcing full or partial sieges according to the state of relations between Damascus and AANES. For example, the past three months have seen the regime checkpoints prevent the entry of fuel, food supplies, baby formula and medicines into the two neighbourhoods due to an ongoing crisis between the two sides.

However, the scope of last week’s building collapse prompted the People’s Municipality to seek assistance from the Aleppo City Council to search the rubble for victims and survivors, according to The Syria Report’s local correspondent. The council sent Civil Defence and firefighting teams with heavy machinery and ambulances. However, the People’s Municipality reportedly prevented some of them from entering the area without providing any reason.

Rescue teams removed 18 bodies from the rubble and identified 16 of them. Three injured people were transferred to the Martyr Khaled Fajr Hospital in Al-Sheikh Maqsoud. According to our correspondent, the YPG prevented the Aleppo City Council medical teams from transferring the injured to hospitals in regime-held areas.

Eyewitnesses told The Syria Report that the rescue operations abruptly halted without apparent reason at noontime January 23, before some victims remaining under the rubble could be reached. Residents said they believe at least two people are still trapped, and whether they are alive or dead is unknown. Immediately after the rescue work stopped, the YPG requested all Aleppo City Council assistance teams to leave its control area.

The collapsed building was constructed in 2018 without a licence from any municipal authority, according to The Syria Report‘s correspondent. That means the building was relatively new and hadn’t been impacted by bombing, whether directly or indirectly. The lasting impacts of wartime bombings are the main reasons other buildings in east Aleppo have collapsed.

According to eyewitnesses, the five-storey building in Al-Sheikh Maqsoud collapsed completely. It was made up mostly of concrete blocks without a reinforced structure, indicating weak columns, foundations and roofs. Seeking the highest possible profit margins, contractors working on unlicensed buildings often use only small quantities of cement and iron, putting the structural integrity at risk.

The ground floor of the collapsed building also served as a car wash business. Last year, some columns on the ground floor were removed to expand the car wash and allow cars to drive through more easily. The facility had no system to drain the water from washing cars.

The building’s owner is a construction contractor, Abu Aref, who was displaced from the rural Afrin area northwest of Aleppo. For some time, he held a position in the People’s Municipality in Al-Sheikh Maqsoud. He constructed the five-storey residential building without a licence, replacing an old house he had previously purchased and demolished.

Abu Aref constructed other buildings in this same way in Al-Sheikh Maqsoud, and he is not the only contractor responsible for poorly executed, unlicensed construction. Such construction has become widespread in Al-Sheikh Maqsoud due to the growing demand for housing by Kurdish families displaced from Afrin since 2018. That year, Turkish forces and their affiliated Syrian opposition forces carried out a military campaign against the YPG in Afrin, and forcibly displaced many Kurdish residents, who sought safety in YPG-held territory.

The demand for housing in Al-Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh is not limited to displaced Kurds but also people from surrounding regime-held Aleppo neighbourhoods. The YPG-held neighbourhoods are generally safer and enjoy a greater degree of freedom. Public services are better available, as well as food supplies, fuel and job opportunities. Rental prices have risen as a result, with the area becoming profitable for many construction contractors and merchants with ties to the YPG.

Building Collapses, Killing Seven, During Looting in Damascus Suburb

17-01-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

Seven people were killed on November 2, 2022, when a four-storey building collapsed in the Rural Damascus governorate city of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad. The victims had been there to extract iron from the damaged building’s columns and roof in order to loot and recycle it. This illicit business–the rubble trade–appears to be attracting new companies as it enjoys military and security protection.

Al-Hajar Al-Aswad is a city and administrative centre of a district within the Rural Damascus governorate, and sits adjacent to the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp. Before 2011, Al-Hajar Al-Aswad had about half a million residents and was known as host to the largest number of Golan Heights residents who had been displaced by the June 1967 war. Much of the city consists of informal housing that was never properly zoned or serviced, and which became destinations for low-income Syrians coming to the capital region from other parts of the country.

The city faced massive wartime damage when the opposition controlled it from 2012 to 2015, and again during the period of Islamic State control in 2015-2018. Regime forces regained control of Al-Hajar Al-Aswad in 2018 after an airstrikes and artillery campaign that destroyed entire neighbourhoods and forcibly displaced any remaining residents.

November’s collapsed building was located in Al-Jazeereh neighbourhood in the northwestern part of the city. Severe damage to that neighbourhood has prevented residents from returning to it. The Rural Damascus governorate has previously allowed conditional returns for residents of the city’s Tishreen and Al-Thawra neighbourhoods, which are considered safely inhabitable. However, according to The Syria Report’s correspondent in the area, only 150 out of thousands who applied were permitted to return.

Pro-regime media reported that the head of the local council of Al-Hajjar Al-Aswad had denied there were any casualties in the building collapse. Rather, he stated that the building was uninhabited and there were only material damages. The reason behind his denial could be that Al-Jazeereh neighbourhood is still uninhabited and returns are not allowed, making it difficult to explain any deaths without acknowledging the looting operations.

However, eyewitnesses confirmed to The Syria Report that the building collapsed while looters were breaking apart the roof to extract iron rebar. A woman and a 16-year-old boy were among the dead, while the rest were members of a family from Al-Jumlan tribe, which hails from East Ghouta.

A work crew from the Rural Damascus governorate came to the scene of the collapsed building equipped with heavy machinery, spending two days searching the rubble for bodies. Personnel from Al-Hajjar Al-Aswad police station and Military Security branch, which controls the area, prevented people from getting near the site.

One Al-Hajar Al-Aswad resident told The Syria Report that they saw large trucks removing debris extracted from the city’s damaged buildings on more than one occasion. Those trucks passed through security checkpoints without objections, The Syria Report’s correspondent added.

Regime forces closed off the entrances to Al-Hajjar Al-Aswad with dirt mounds in 2018, though one entrance from Al-Thalatheen Street was kept open. This entrance is overseen by two checkpoints that closely inspect anyone who has been permitted to pass through.

According to The Syria Report’s correspondent, the looting crews are given security permissions by the army’s Fourth Division. These permissions allow the crews to enter Al-Hajar Al-Aswad for work. The looting crews collect the rubble in certain locations of the city, where rubble dealers then go purchase it. The most important material for sale is iron, which is transported via trucks to furnaces to be recycled.

Syrian Company for Metals and Investments

The Syria Report’s correspondent cited sources in Al-Hajjar Al-Aswad who said some of those trucks belong to the Syrian Company for Metals and Investments, whose articles of association had been approved by the Decision No. 3061/2018 of the Ministry of Internal Trade and Consumer Protection. Under Decision No. 3061, it has the right to import and export all types of metals, iron, plastics and aluminium, as well as sort and transport rubble, trade construction and cladding materials and cement, in addition to other activities.

The Syria Report could not independently confirm whether the rubble trucks indeed belonged to this company.

Aleppo to Provide Temporary Shelters for Residents of Building at Risk of Collapse

17-01-2023/in HLP, News /by Rand Shamaa

Two temporary housing buildings have been completed in Aleppo’s Masaken Hanano district and will house residents of homes at risk of collapse, the governor of Aleppo told the state-owned Tishreen newspaper in early January.

The units are part of a project–slated for completion by the end of 2023–that the Aleppo City Council launched in 2020 to construct 10 residences containing 224 apartments in Masaken Hanano, in Aleppo’s eastern neighbourhoods, a source on the council told The Syria Report. The council owns the units.

However, the units were not fully allocated for residents whose homes are at risk, unlike what the governor said. According to the city council source, the council will not distribute them as alternative housing but rather as temporary shelters for emergency or urgent cases. For example, people facing sudden eviction from their homes due to imminent collapse will be allowed to stay in the Masaken Hanano housing units for a renewable six-month period, during which time they must search for other housing.

Unconfirmed rumours suggest that the 10 housing units project was built on the site of buildings that were destroyed by regime airstrikes during the period of opposition control over east Aleppo in 2012-2016. Thos destroyed buildings are said to have been owned by residents who were forcibly displaced from the area.

The city council plans to use the units to house some residents of the informal Al-Haydariyeh neighbourhood, which is now the site of a real estate development zone, the council source said. These residents will only be allowed to live in the units temporarily, until the housing units allocated to them are completed–which in turn will not be free of charge, as residents have to buy it.

Under Real Estate Development and Investment Law No. 15 of 2008, a real estate development zone may handle informal settlements, no matter the size of the latter. An administrative body subjecting an area to Law No. 15 may expropriate privately owned real estate located within that area in accordance with the Expropriation Law. In cases like this, the administrative body must allocate a portion of the residential plots it builds to sell to the owners of the real estate expropriated from that zone.

According to the website of the General Commission for Real Estate Development and Investment, the Aleppo City Council established the real estate development zone in Al-Haydariyeh in 2010. The 118-hectare zone was meant to “upgrade” the area, which contained unlicensed constructed buildings. The area is fully expropriated by the state, and all the real estate within it are included in the general zoning plan for Aleppo city, which was approved in 2004.

Beyond the housing project in Masaken Hanano, the city council has a number of other units in the neighbourhood, as well as in Al-Sukkari and Al-Mashhad neighbourhoods that can be used as temporary shelters. Such buildings are owned by people who were forcibly displaced to opposition-held areas. They were partially damaged, though the city council rehabilitated a number of them in 2021-2022 and they now house families who were evacuated from at-risk homes in Al-Saliheen, Al-Fardous, Al-Maadi, Al-Maysar, Qadhi Askar and other neighbourhoods.

In December 2022, the city council began demolishing some severely damaged and uninhabitable buildings in various parts of east Aleppo. The head of the city council said on November 9, 2022 that evacuations had begun for some 1,500 buildings at risk of collapse so that they could be demolished. He added that an action plan was needed to evacuate and find alternative housing for those residents, as a sizable portion of those buildings are still inhabited.

For those forced to vacate their damaged, at-risk homes, temporary housing is not easy to come by. The city council requires that applicants meet a complex set of conditions before being granted such housing. One person who was evacuated from their home in Al-Saliheen neighbourhood told The Syria Report that the city council refused to grant them the temporary housing usually given to people in his situation because “he owns a car.” The justification wasn’t clear but it could be that the council considers a car-owner as being relatively well-off and hence not needing support. Other people said that wasta, or personal connections, were needed to obtain such housing, or payment of bribes to city council officials.