23 April 2013

HAZMIEH, Lebanon: Lebanon needs to refocus on building safety, the Safe Building Alliance International warned Monday, criticizing the lack of progress made in the country since dozens of people were killed last year.

A flurry of activity followed the deaths of 27 people in an Ashrafieh building collapse at the beginning of last year. Municipality and Interior Ministry teams canvased neighborhoods to find structurally weak buildings and offered their services to concerned citizens.

Hundreds of buildings were identified, but the government was largely incapable of repairing the identified damaged structures.

Months passed, other political crises came and went, and the issue of applying a national safety code to the largely unenforced building and construction sector no longer made the headlines.

However, the Safe Building Alliance International is aiming to bring the issue back into the spotlight in order for the government to finally take action a goal the group admits will be difficult to achieve.

We dont have any kind of laws to enforce, said Youssef Fawzi Azzam, head of the alliance.

Im trying to do this through a kind of lobbying, using the media, and continuous meetings. We have done several conferences with different municipalities in Lebanon, Azzam said.

The alliance held a conference in Hazmieh Monday, and highlighted the importance of infrastructure maintenance, building code standards and excavation protocols.

The Jal al-Dib bridge was dismantled last year after an assessment deemed it too deteriorated and no longer safe. Despite the major traffic headaches that ensued, little has changed to improve infrastructure repair practices, the safety group said.

The lack of enforced construction procedures is also putting buildings in jeopardy. It was one of the factors that led to the collapse of the seven-story building in Ashrafieh.

The alliance added that there was no supervision over whether buildings were compromising the foundations of neighboring structures.

During excavation, especially in Beirut, there usually is no offset; you usually go directly to the boundaries. The cost of land is expensive and you want to make use of all the land, and sometimes the excavation goes beyond the foundation of the neighboring building, Azzam said.

The alliance, along with several other safety organizations, said there should be general building codes that protect the countrys infrastructure from collapse during an earthquake.

Major fault lines pass through Lebanon and geologists have warned of potentially disastrous earthquakes.

Azzam also suggested the introduction of standards to prevent the establishment of warehouses inside residential buildings due to their potential hazard to the larger structure.

Police officials attended the conference in support of the push for change.

But Azzam said the difficulty in making change went well beyond raising awareness and finding ministers to take up the cause. He said the main problem was the lack of laws to enforce safety standards.

This issue is one of many in the country that easily garners attention but has lingered for years due to the difficulty in mobilizing the government to take action and allocate others with addressing and handling the problem.

We are asking for a more decentralized law to allow municipalities to do this kind of work, Azzam explained. Its not only about law, you need to give them more financial decentralization. So they can have an income to implement programs based on the law.

Copyright The Daily Star 2013.