July 2001 Vol iv, Issue 7
United Nations Secretariat for the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction
52 rue des Pâquis/Palais Wilson CH-1201 Geneva Tel: 41 22 917 97 06, Fax: 41 22 917 90 98 Email: isdr@un.org
| When I began my career in 1969 as an architect for the Bank of Municipalities in Turkey, one of my first assignments was to a small town near Konya. I was to approve a site plan for the new Central Business District. When I realized that the earthquake fault line passed directly through the area reserved for the business district under the proposed town plan, I notified the authorities and suggested that a new safer site be chosen. I said, "you will be jeopardizing the business district if you build these offices on a fault line." My written report noted the dangers of such a site and strongly suggested the relocation of the commercial district to a safer area. Shortly afterwards an answer came from the municipality that stated, "according to the municipality assembly, it has been decided that the fault line will be moved away from the municipal borders and that the central business district will be built as originally planned
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I remember my childhood filled with tremors scattered around Turkey. In 1951, I was a six year old primary school first grader when the Pasinler earthquake (Erzurum) shook our house down. I remember my mother saving my father, brother and me, pushing us out into a bed of shattered snowflakes. A few days later a strong aftershock occurred during class hours. Trying to escape, I was trampled at the threshold of the school door which only opened inwards.
In 1991, I realized that the real disaster was in the neighborhoods that we live in. The natural disaster is nothing compared to it. Two years after the great Marmara earthquake of 1999 shook this young man of 57, I recognized the need to create and run a fully voluntary disaster management organization, the MAY Project, where the team is the community itself, the vision, the mission and the goal.
The MAY Project is a plan that teaches how to prepare to live with the threat of an earthquake. In the first phase, only five elements are needed: a muhtar (elected neighborhood leader) who possesses the awareness to respond, an architect that the muhtar will find to implement the MAY Project, a handful of volunteers to start with from the neighborhood, an organized group such as a non-governmental organization, and the enthusiasm to motivate all of the above individuals. Please know thy neighborhood, learn about all possible disasters and know yourself. MAY volunteers must continuously think, "how little I can grasp, yet, amazingly, how much I can do!"
The author is Mr Ahmet Turhan Altiner, founder of the May Project in Turkey. More information can be obtained from Mr Altiner at a.t.altiner@superonline.com
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