17 girls died in dormitory collapse

COLLAPSE:A girl's dormitory in Konya's southern district Taşkent collapses early Friday, killing 17 and injuring 27 others.

Saturday, August 2, 2008

An explosion in a girls' dormitory for a private Koran course killed 17 girls and injured many others when the dormitory building collapsed. The quality of the building’s material is very low and the damage would have been smaller if the building was made better, says Chamber of the Construction Engineer’s Konya Branch head

ISTANBUL – TDN with wire dispatches

A girl's dormitory in Konya's southern district Taşkent collapsed after a suspected gas explosion early Friday morning, killing 17 girls and injuring at least 27 others.

�I was in the section of the building that did not collapse with five other friends. We closely felt the flames coming up from the ground floor,� said 13-year-old Merve Avcı, who was slightly injured in the collapse, Anatolia news agency reported. The dormitory belongs to a private foundation named the Balcılar Town Course and Student Support Association. Around 40 girls, aged 8 to 16, were staying there to learn the Koran on their summer break. Hüseyin Çömlekçi, the head of the foundation and the dormitory manager, was arrested, Doğan news agency reported. The dormitory does not have any connection with the Religious Affairs Directorate, the institution authorized to give permission to Koran courses, said State Minister Mustafa Said Yazıcıoğlu. The Education Ministry had charged two inspectors with examining the situation of the dormitory.

There would not have been so much damage and so many deaths if the building was constructed with proper material and if it had not been so old, said Uğur İbrahim Altay, the head of the Construction Engineers' Chamber Konya branch, to private NTV news channel. �The concrete quality of the building is so bad. Anything that we touch falls into pieces,� he said. Altay hypothesized that there was a gas leak from a liquefied petroleum gas tank and that it exploded after making contact with a spark.

A strong whistling

Avcı said she heard a strong whistling coming up from the ground floor when she woke up for pre-dawn prayers. �I went into the kitchen with two teachers and one of them said, �A gas pipe has broken,'� she said. Avcı then went to the second floor after her teachers told her to close the kitchen door and five minutes later the gas smell took over the dormitories, followed by a very strong explosion. The explosion occurred around 5:00 a.m.

�We woke up for the pre-dawn prayer. Some of our friends went for a wash and a great explosion occurred there,� said 12-year-old Hümeysa Akdede, another injured girl.

Local people and gendarmerie forces first helped remove the girls from the collapsed building and injured girls were taken to nearby hospitals. Television footage showed local residents trying to remove the rubble from a flattened, concrete building, some using their bare hands. A rescue team of 30 people from gendarmerie forces in Ankara arrived at the area. Another rescue team from the southern province of Antalya's Alanya district came to the area as well.

Meanwhile, another rescue team from Konya's Karaman district driving to help with rescue work got into a traffic accident. Driver Cihangir Koç and civil defense director Şakir Oruç were injured.

Interior Minister Beşir Atalay, State Minister Nimet Çubukçu, who is responsible of family and women's issues, and Health Minister Recep Akdağ went to the district by a helicopter after the explosion. The Turkish Red Crescent sent food and a group of experts to the area, including a psychosocial support expert. Meanwhile, the charge d'affaires of the French Embassy, Antoine Anfre, sent a letter of condolences to Foreign Minister Ali Babacan and Interior Minister Beşir Atalay.

No fire report

The dormitory building has an older and a newer section. The older section of the dormitory building collapsed after the explosion, while the newer section's conveyer system remained but the walls collapsed. The Koran course in the dormitory was begun 17 years ago by the foundation, Doğan news agency reported. The dormitory was opened as a boy's dormitory in 1990, said Halil Şahin, the national education director of Konya. Four months ago the association applied to use the dormitory as a girl's dormitory, but the directorate did not give the license because of a new regulation that necessitates a report on the building regarding a possible earthquake or fire, which the dormitory does not have, Şahin said.

In 2004 an 11-story apartment building collapsed in Konya, killing 92 residents. The collapse was blamed on faulty refurbishment work, Anatolia reported. A year earlier, a school dormitory in Bingöl in southeastern Turkey collapsed in an earthquake, killing 83 children, while in 2003 the dormitory of a Koran course in Kayseri collapsed due to a gas leak explosion, killing 10 children.

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