Site Observations on Buildings’ Performance in Hatay Province after Kahramanmaraş Earthquakes

Two major earthquakes of 7.7 and 7.6 magnitudes hit a large region of east south of Türkiye on the same day. The first 7.7 MW earthquake occurred in Pazarcık, Kahramanmaraş on the 6th of Feb 2023 followed by an earthquake of 7.6 MW in Elbistan, Kahramanmaraş after 9 hours. Thousands of buildings collapsed in ten provinces in Türkiye and caused thousands of life losses and injuries. More than 14 million people were affected, and a lot of people lost their homes which makes the two major events the worst natural disaster of the century. This paper presents site observations on the seismic performance of the buildings in Hatay province that is the most affected city by these earthquakes. Site observations indicate that most of the collapsed buildings are old building stocks constructed before 1999 and collapsed in a pancake failure mode which increases life losses. In general, newly constructed buildings that were designed according to the new Turkish earthquake design code show good seismic performance. Reasons for failures and failure modes of old and new buildings were investigated.