This year, 65 acutely unsafe situations have already been detected in houses in the Groningen earthquake area. Intervention with shoring up to mandatory evacuation is then necessary. It happened to Albert Heidema from Appingedam and his wife on Friday.
This is evident from figures from the so-called dashboard of the Institute for Mining Damage Groningen (IMG). If an Acute Unsafe Situation (AOS) is detected, the damage counter is obliged to do something about the unsafety of a building within two days. There may then no longer be a direct safety risk for residents, local residents or other persons.
Temporary measures are immediately taken by a contractor if it is indeed an acute unsafe situation. Consideration should be given to installing struts or wall anchors to ensure greater stability of the building.
‘debilitating condition’
An AOS notification is very drastic for residents. Sometimes a building is partially or even completely closed and the residents have to be evacuated. This is also the case with Albert Heidema and his wife from Appingedam. They were housed in a temporary home on Friday, Heidema confirms after being approached by DVHN.
Their house from 1996 is in the process of strengthening and the family would already move to a temporary residence for a year and a half. According to Heidema, this has been accelerated by the AOS finding. He calls it a “debilitating condition.” Heidema himself has been in a strengthening process for years and says that it not only destroys him physically, but also mentally. “Precious years of human lives have been lost and we had imagined that differently.”
The weekly figures of the IMG (week 1 to week 31 in 2023) show that so far at least 330 reports from concerned residents from the earthquake area have been received by the IMG damage desk. They sounded the alarm because, according to them, there would be an acutely unsafe situation. In 65 cases this actually turned out to be the case.
‘evacuated from home’
This means that the number of AOS reports seems to have risen considerably compared to last year, when the IMG received 451 reports of dangerous situations, of which 73 were deemed to be well-founded. With almost five months to go, that number seems to be well exceeded. “That is not something to be happy about,” says Heidema, who says that gas extraction may soon stop, but the problems are anything but gone. Incidentally, there were 109 well-founded AOS reports in 2020 and 101 in 2021.
Heidema is chairman of the ‘Ons Land, Ons Lu’ foundation in Appingedam. The foundation itself registers earthquakes and helps victims who have run into problems as a result. Three weeks ago, the sewage pipe and the rainwater pipe at his house burst. According to him, they are located near a gas pipeline. “A few days ago our toilet pipe also burst and the water came through the ceiling. This has become a valid AOS report and we have been evacuated from our home.”