Last minute...Two floors of the collapsed building in Maltepe turned out to be illegal! Mayor Öymen: Settlement seems to be 5 times larger

A collapse occurred on the 3rd floor of a 7-storey building in Cevizli District of Istanbul's Maltepe district at around 06:00 in the morning. According to records, 33 people lived in the 12-flat building, and 6 people have been rescued so far during the rescue efforts of 7 people trapped under the rubble. While the cause of the collapse in the building is expected to be determined as a result of the investigations, Maltepe Mayor Esin Köymen pointed out a striking situation regarding the building in a statement she made in a live broadcast.

Köymen said that they detected illegal access to the top two floors of the building and used the following statements:

"The issue is exactly how many floors the building has in the occupancy. It is a building built in the 80s, and when we removed its project from the archives, we saw that the building we saw had two illegal floors. The occupancy seems to be 5 floors, but two floors were illegal. We checked the minutes in our municipality archive and saw that the building had such a situation."

Explaining how the incident took place, Köymen said, "A report of the building sitting on the ground and lying on its side was received around 6.30 in the morning. When we arrived at the scene, we saw that the building was sitting on the basement floor and the first floor and was leaning backwards."

'WE HAD OPENED OUR WHOLE ARCHIVES, THERE WERE NO COMPLAINTS'

Underlining that they had not received any notice about the collapsed building before, Köymen said, "We had all our archives opened at the municipality, we checked whether there had been any applications regarding whether the building was risky or not, and whether any action had been taken regarding this. We did not receive any complaints."

On the other hand, Istanbul Governor Davut Gül came to the scene, made investigations and made a statement. Stating that the building was built in 1987, Gül said, "It is a ground plus 6-storey building. The ground floor shop uses the 6 floors as flats. There are 12 flats in total, and according to the civil registry office, a total of 33 people live. Contact was made with 4 of the 7 people under the rubble."

"Four flats on the ground floor plus 2 floors were damaged due to collapse." Gül said, "According to our records, a total of 14 people are registered in 4 flats. Sometimes there may be people who come as guests. So far, we have determined that 2 people living in 14 flats are in the country." Stating that 5 people were rescued, Gül said, "Contact was established with 4 of the 7 people. Work continues. Search and rescue efforts for 3 people continue." Governor Gül added that the health conditions of those rescued were good.