The earthquake in Turkey and Syria shook the dust off the Sidonian collective memory, which shares the impact of the 1956 earthquake. Although it did not claim any victims, it destroyed the “Arbaeen Rijal” neighborhood overlooking the southern Sidon sea, creating in its place the Tameer neighborhood in Ain al-Hilweh. The “men of the forty” were rebuilt and the effects of the “shake of 56” faded away, to the point that if it were repeated, those affected might not find the country that sheltered them 67 years ago.
The recent earthquake revived forgotten memories. Whoever lived it recalled its events, stimulating a sense of fear among the new generations, not only from the tremors, but also from the tsunami of the sea that separates the Corniche from them. Fouad Al-Bilani was five years old at the time. “The municipal police and the gendarmerie came and took the people to Bahr al-Eid, before transporting them on the same day to Nazlet Sidon, where tents were set up to shelter the afflicted. And quickly, the compensation was distributed to us after a quick detection. We received compensation and a house in the Al-Tameer neighborhood in Ain Al-Hilweh.” Al-Bilani fears a recurrence of the earthquake. Not for his fear of him, as much as his fear of his harm. “70 years ago, we had a country that took us in quickly. Now, who will shelter us in her absence?”
Cracked houses
Muhammad Musharah (30 years old) did not hear anything from his family about the earthquake that destroyed their homes in “Arbaeen Men”. In a dilapidated building built by the “Department of Construction and Development” at the end of the sixties for the residents of the neighborhood, the young man has lived since 2000. All he knows is that the last floor of the building in which he resides was built in a different way and is subject to collapse after parts of it fell from time to time.
Along the southern waterfront, cracked houses appear hanging on top of each other, between Khan al-Ifranj and Tallat Rijal al-Arba’in. Some of them were vacated by the previous municipalities, and some of them were demolished during the construction of Sheikh Zayed Park for fear that it would collapse on them, but the largest part is still inhabited. Behind that cracked façade is Maher Almas’ house, which overlooks Dahr El-Mir Square. A three-storey building that looks like pieces glued together gradually, rising above a sandy nook covered with layers of cracked cement. Almas’ house consisted of three rooms. However, with the onset of winter, it receded into half a room, after water fell from the ceilings of the other rooms. His furniture was emptied and he was crammed into the middle of the last room, surrounded by barrels into which water was dripping. We carry umbrellas when moving between rooms. The roof breathed its last after repeated maintenance attempts. The layer of asphalt that he had spread on the roof to prevent “starching” eroded, and worn-out iron bars appeared on the roof, from the ceilings of the rooms and the columns of the walls. Neighbors’ homes are integrated into a similar palette of eroded walls.
The expected catastrophe of the portal above!
At the beginning of last December, the municipality of Sidon hung a banner on the facade of a building in the Al-Bawabat Al-Fawqa locality, saying: “This building, which is located on estate 1089, is cracked and on the verge of collapsing. He asks all of its residents to vacate it immediately. This notice, which preceded the earthquake in Turkey and Syria by two months, was not the first. Several times, the municipality issued a warning to the residents of the “Budair and Hamdan” building to evacuate it, after it was proven dangerous. The assessment of the engineering department in the municipality of Sidon was supported by a similar assessment conducted by the “Khatib & Alami” company commissioned by the High Commission for Relief in 2018. The reason for its crack was that it was bombed during the Israeli invasion, then its cracks increased with the passage of time.
At that time, the concerned authorities agreed on the need to evacuate the 8-storey building; Including apartments, shops and clinics. The authority granted its residents sufficient rent allowances for a period of six months. Some settled in alternative housing, while the owners of seven apartments returned to live in them. Those who remain realize that they are awaiting collapse at any moment, but they justify their steadfastness by “their financial inability to buy or rent another apartment, especially after the dollarization of rents.” In warning before the economic crisis, the High Commission for Relief promised to restore the building at the expense of the state. However, after more than three years, and about two months ago, “the municipality of Sidon received a letter from the Council of Ministers stating that restoration is one of the duties of the building owners according to the building law,” as the head of the engineering department in the municipality, Engineer Ziad Al-Hakawati, reported. The latter pointed out that Doctor Ayman Al-Sousi, owner of a clinic, and Yahya Hobeish, owner of a shop that sells animals in the building, are active in collecting the necessary funds for the restoration.
disclosure requests
Al-Hakawati considered, in his interview with Al-Akhbar, that the “Badir and Hamdan” building is the most dangerous in Sidon, before and after the Turkey-Syria earthquake, even more dangerous than the old Sidon houses.
After the earthquake, the municipality received five requests to inspect cracks in buildings and walls, including the Al-Islah and Ain Al-Hilweh schools. “We will detect. But cracks are not dangerous to the structure of buildings. As for Old Sidon, the technical inspection of its houses was carried out by the municipality in 2012, and it was found at the time that all the houses needed restoration, the value of which was estimated at $30 million at the time. Since then, four parties have worked to restore a number of them (the Muhammad Zaidan Association, the United Nations Development Program, the United Nations Population Fund and the International First Aid Organization). The storyteller attributes the cause of the cracks to “negligence in repairing emerging faults in old houses, especially those built of sandstone.” In addition to the random construction that rose to several layers above the basic building. Also among the factors, “the declaration of ancient Sidon as an archaeological area imposed restrictions on homeowners in it to invest and dispose of it, unless it encourages many to restore their homes.”