WB study: 10% of the population in Tirana and 6% in Durrës live in high-risk buildings

 The World Bank concluded recently  that 10% of the population in Tirana and 6% of the population in Durrës currently live in very high-risk buildings, announcing that they could collapse in case of another earthquake.

Tirana is the largest city in Albania, inhabited by approximately 17% of the total population.

The two types of buildings most at risk are reinforced concrete palaces and masonry buildings, which can cause more fatalities. Nearly 50,000 people, or about 10% of the population, live in high-risk buildings, the Bank analyzes.

While in Durrës approximately 7,000 people, or about 6% of the city population, live in high-risk types of buildings.

Albania has experienced many earthquakes with great severity in the past. The deadliest were a series of earthquakes in 1851 near the cities of Vlora and Berat, causing the loss of 600 lives.

Another major earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 in 1967 collapsed about 500 houses, injured 170 people and caused 20 fatalities. Finally, in 2019, Albania was hit by a series of harmful earthquakes, one of the strongest and most deadly, of which was the 6.4 magnitude earthquake on November 26. The event, which caused 50 casualties and over 2,000 injuries, caused 1 billion euros in damage. Approximately 1,500 buildings were damaged in Tirana.

The World Bank analyzes that a large number of palaces in Albania and in all cities in Central Europe, the Balkans and Central Asia are prone to earthquake damage.

Earthquakes in these regions have damaged certain types of buildings (palaces) in part or in full, causing many homelessness and fatalities.

The weakness of these facilities is attributed to the manner of construction and the lack of maintenance, supervision over many decades. The latest World Bank study analyzes earthquake risk for households living in pre-2000 housing and provides data for states in order to improve their safety.