Assessment of reinforced concrete building damages following the Kahramanmaraş earthquakes in Malatya, Turkey (February 6, 2023)

Earthquakes of magnitude Mw = 7.7 and Mw = 7.6 hit the city of Kahramanmaraş (Turkey) on 6 February 2023. These earthquakes caused serious damage in 11 provinces in Turkey resulting in over 50,000 deaths and huge economic losses with the collapse of thousands of buildings. Two consecutive devastating earthquakes have severely damaged the reinforced concrete building stock located in Malatya. There are many reasons reinforced concrete structures suffer damage under the influence of seismic loads. These reasons can be listed as material and section properties that do not comply with earthquake codes, workmanship defects, ground parameters that are not considered and design errors, as seen in field investigations after earthquakes in Turkey in the past. In this research, a field study was conducted on reinforced concrete buildings damaged after the earthquakes in Malatya province. The causes of structural damages in reinforced concrete buildings between 6–26 years of age were assessed in terms of design and material defects. The structural damages were mainly caused due to insufficient stirrups in structural members, short column, strong beam–weak column, failures of infill walls, soft story type collapse, poor concrete quality, and reinforcement corrosion. In addition to the field investigation, the spectrum relationships created using raw acceleration data obtained from DEMP (Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency) stations in Malatya province were compared with the design response spectra.