A field survey conducted in Tripoli, northern Lebanon, warned that eighteen multi-storey buildings might collapse at any moment as a result of construction defects and cracks in their walls. The same report added that more than 400 other buildings need urgent treatment to spare their residents the risk of collapsing on their heads.
The residents of these buildings refuse to leave because there is no alternative housing for them. She supports the earth with a stick that carries some of her body, and she is the one who does not find anyone to support the roof of her house.
Umm Mahmoud, who lives in Al-Baraka neighborhood in the Beddawi district of Tripoli, knows, as do hundreds of families, that they live in buildings that may collapse, and they do not have the option to escape from possible death.
“I am forced to live here, I have nothing to do. These buildings are very old, but we have nowhere to go,” says Nihad, one of the residents of these buildings.
Nihad adds to “Sky News Arabia”: “The rental prices are expensive, reaching the lowest of 200 dollars, and this is an amount that I can secure monthly.”
It is a historical city. The age of its construction extends back to before the Mamluk era.. Above these markets, the city’s residents built buildings to cover up their poverty, but they did not take into account the conditions of public safety.
Safwan Shahal, head of the Civil Engineers Branch at the Engineers Syndicate, explains: “Buildings have problems since their inception, such as water and electricity, all of which affected the durability of the buildings.”
And the Lebanese engineer adds to “Sky News Arabia”: “The earthquake exposed the hidden… it created cracks in the originally worn-out buildings and revealed the defects on a larger scale.”
The recent earthquakes revealed the fragility of the adjoining buildings, so the walls cracked and the facades of the buildings were divided, and the lives of its inhabitants were in a free fall over the heads of the residents or passers-by, and it did not need tremors to move the faults. They are buildings suspended in the air.
Umm Fadi, a woman who lives in one of the cracked buildings, recounts her suffering with housing in the area, saying: “The walls make terrifying noises from time to time, forcing us to flee every time for fear that the building will collapse on us.”
In the initial survey conducted by the local authorities, it was found that 18 buildings are threatened with collapsing, while more than 400 other buildings may fall if immediate treatment measures are not taken.
Hundreds of buildings are in danger of collapsing and their residents are at risk of death. This is a fact well known by the government and local authorities.
Nevertheless, here are the people left to face the danger of death alone, in the clearest picture of the equation of the dichotomy of the state and the people, even in fateful moments.