Earthquakes in Croatia - deaths caused by unregulated buildings?

[FlatAssembler]

At the end of the last year and the beginning of this year, there have been some relatively strong earthquakes in Petrinja and Sisak, towns in Croatia near the border with Bosnia. They caused around 30 deaths. Since then, Croatian media often claim most or all of those deaths could have been avoided if the buildings were built according to regulations. That is, they claim the buildings that crashed and killed people in the earthquake were not actually properly built, and that this is because the regulations were not enforced enough (and that includes some government buildings). While it is tempting to believe that we can prevent deaths from earthquakes simply by following regulations, I ask myself if what the media is doing is just blaming the victim. I have no idea how to evaluate the statement that most or all of those deaths could have been avoided by following the laws related to building buildings. What do you think about that?