An earthquake in Tehran, or in any other hugely populated poorly built city in the world for that matter, will result in a quite ugly scene with unpleasant reverberations. Something must be done in advance. To prevent chaos, I suggest the important government buildings (banks, for example) and the residential p(a)laces of the political leaders to be built by the Japanese experts who are used to such natural disasters.

As for ordinary people, I think it is obvious that to build better houses, you need to spend more money. So if you are ordinary *and* poor, then you better pack up and kiss the capital good-bye or else continue to live there at your own risk.

Other important buildings include: hospitals, bridges, dams, and aqueducts. I got this from what Google found for me: http://quake.usgs.gov/prepare/factsheets/SaferStructures/ . This is also interesting/frightening: http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/eqsmosde.lis . Also take a look at this: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsww/ and other sublinks of http://quake.usgs.gov/ .

The following are related to the topic of your post. note that these are all published prior to the quake in Bam.

http://www.jica.go.jp/english/news/2001/08-01.html

http://www.payvand.com/news/03/feb/1092.html

http://english.pravda.ru/world/2003/03/10/44188.html

Remove all these comments, if you want to incorporate these links in/under your post.


http://www.aig.asn.au/tehran_at_risk.htm

http://continuitycentral.com/news0393.htm

And for a good laugh see the title of this page:

http://mehr.sharif.edu/~sce/personnel.htm

I also believe that we should release a statement asking for national mobilization of resources for confronting future earthquakes. I'll look volunteers for writing such a statement/petition.

This is a great idea, and the time is now that people and media are sensitive to this issue due to recent human disaster. I suggest someone post a draft of a petition here and people comment on it, to improve it, and then begin to collect signatures.

The thing is that this problem is not a political problem, as was in the case of imprisoned students, and in my view a letter of students abroad - which their free time is at the level of signing a petition and many of them either don’t have the expertise or busy enough to come back to Iran and give a “momentum” to this – wouldn’t have any effect and might even degrade the effect of the future petitions.

This issue needs a lot of money and management skills to be handled and it’s not like an order to free a student from prison. I wish it was :(

Senor Grad,
Why are you so eager to put comments, even if they are trivial ones? :)
Your first two comments are what we call it in Persian "HAMAAN GOOYAANEH"; Example: "Everything good is good."
To your credit, I admit that most of the times trivial things are neglected in iran ...

Maybe someone should give it a start and then we can comment on it. These are my initial pessimistic thoughts; correct me if you think I am wrong.

I doubt that the government is strong enough to have any impact, even if it desires. I think they (at least the municipality of Tehran) do have some anti-earthquake measures, which by law should be practiced by builders. Guess what? They are rarely practiced, even in case of the most expensive houses of the city. The municipality should supervise the construction process, and as a governmental institution, it is vulnerable to all sort of corrupt behavior such as bribe taking. So, there are some measures, and not supervised correctly by the government (more specifically by the municipality) and therefore these measures are not practiced by building companies who are looking after their own profit. What is your petition supposed to do? If it's to highlight the importance of such measures, and maybe ask for strengthening them, it may nominally be successful. But even if the measures are enhanced on paper, are they ever put into practice? I doubt. And putting them into practice is not something a petition can do. The corrupt supervision structures should change, which at best changes over long periods of time (if ever!).

I also agree that something should be done. But I seriously doubt that a petition can do anything practical. Maybe the best way is to try to encourage some knowledgeable, and honest, civil engineers to initiate some efforts, such as initiating an NGO doing some sort of supervision. The petition at best can attract people's attention, and on the other hand make them more scared, when they really can't do anything.

If we really have the prestige you talked about, let's spend it when it has an effect.

These are my initial thoughts on a petition I haven’t seen yet! So if someone makes a petition, I hope to see that it’s totally different from what I thought of and very effective. Good luck.

A side note. In an earthquake in big city such as Tehran, the main issue is not the destruction of the buildings. The destruction AFTER the earthquakes are far more important. For instance, I know that the gas pipelines in Tehran may explode and then the whole city will burn. And to my knowledge Japanese are currently working to secure the gas pipelines of Tehran. Or the water problem would be another issue, if the dams get destroyed.

It all comes down to the fatalist mentality that is deeprooted in many of us. Some people have to realize that these "natural" catastrophies can be avoided and they are not God's will or something like that. People have the evolutionary instinct to survive and the Freudian death wish as well, but the governments don't obey Freudian psychology, so why is it that the Iranian government keeps postponing doing anything about Earthquakes? In fact I saw an old report from the Geological Institute of Iran a long time ago which was actually published in a confidential setting 20 years ago. In this assesment they gave a "half-life" of 60 years for an earthquake in Tehran. This half-life is now extended because of the other earthquakes in the region in the last 20 years, but the message is there. They also predicted that most of the casualties would be after the earthquake in terms of fires, draughts and epidemies, while the quake itself would literally ground south of Tehran with its narrow alleys and old structures.

I agree with Señor Tautologist that some of my comments are redundant, but I don't think my first comment above was one of them. :-) In any case, even though there is a difference between a tautology and a trivial remark, as you said, some trivial things tend to be overlooked. It's therefore a good thing to reiterate. (Not to draw a comparison, but somewhere in Koran, God addresses the Prophet: Remind them, as thou art surely the reminder!) It does help these trivial things sink in.

On another note, I think Mehdi Y.'s idea is closest to what needs to be done. A petition doesn't seem fit for the situation. I think it is obvious that all people would want to avoid getting caught under the rubble and dying a horrible death, so the petition thing doesn't make sense: Everybody would of course sign it.

What is perhaps more important is pushing it. Unfortunately, what will happen is after all the dust settles (almost literally) and people cool off, they'd simply hope/pray that things like that would not happen to them. And therefore the project of building better buildings will absorb dust. (A lot of dusty metaphors here!)

Let me read the rest of the comments now!

Firstly,I mentioned tighter building regulations only as an example. Actually, as cited in comments, its not only building destruction that may cause fatality in a city like Tehran.

Secondly, I do not think that activism should necessarily be political. Such a petition may alert people as well as authorities. The fact is that people in Tehran simply ignore the threat. Our effort may keep this issue alive. My point is to tell Iranians there is something very close to be afraid of; somthing not to be ignored.

Finally, I am not saying we can solve this problem or even start something that may later be a solution to it. For me it is only matter of possibility. If we think there is a chance for us to push something a bit, I don't think it is wise not to take that chance.

Funny! I searched and found the verse in Koran that I was referring to. It is verse 21 of chapter 88. What do you think the title of the chapter is? It is: "The Overwhelming Calamity"!

See for yourself:

http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/k/koran/koran-idx?type=DIV0&byte=950159

On another note, I have to clarify my previous comment where I said the idea of a petition did not make much sense in this context. (Some other comments also argued for this position.) A well-written and well thought-out (and well edited) *statement*, on the other hand sounds like the right thing to do.

Again, in order to "keep the issue alive" you should keep reminding people, as 88:21 advises.

Here's a hopefully non-tautological, non-trivial and non-redundant comment for once: How about assigining a day, a week, or even a month per year as, say, The Week of Earthquake (Awareness)? We have so many useless weeks (The Week of Holy Defense, for example, that now after Saddam's capture serves almost no purpose), so why not have a useful one? This would remind us and hopefully keep the issue alive. Or how about one week per season? Or how about the anniversary of all the weeks when previous earthquakes took lives somewhere in Iran in the current century?

Like the idea, don't you? Well, at least I do! :-)

The very existance of Tehran is in question. Even if the earthquake regulations are fully enforced , it does not make any difference. Earthquake in Tehran is TIR-E-KHALAAS, there are other things that kills Tehranis on daily basis, air polution is just one of them. A city of 12 milions population has no wastewater system, some Tehranis even haven't heard of such thing up untill a decade ago.
Tehran is the center of everything in iran, from economy to education, from art and culture to industry. More than 10 universities, almost all auto-industries, all govermental offices, almost all theaters and the majority of cinemas in the country, all major newspapers and magazines, ...

These attractions lure people from all around the country to this city, some of them ending up in slums, and attracted to criminal activities ...

Nothing can be done untill a massive decentralization of the wealth, goverment, culture is done.

Hossein Derakhshan has written a great piece in Persian arguing that in fact this terrible earthquake is a political issue. He says it is the government who is responsible for not protecting its citizens. The govenment is spending bilions to develope atomic technology and is not spending anything to protect its citizens against earthquakes, air pollution, and trafic accidents. He concludes by saying that this all because the Iranian govenment is independent of its constituents because of oil money, so it can survive without caring what happens to those people.

"Nothing can be done untill a massive decentralization of the wealth, goverment, culture is done."
- An earthquake of similar magnitude hit California pretty recently, but there were 2 casualties compared to all the deaths in Iran. Is removal of big cities a realistic option, in this day and age? When strong economic and political forces pull people into big cities, that is what will happen.

The issue is changing the way buildings are built, and rebuilding old ones: to be effective, that can only be a long-term effort, not a spurt of building activity for a year or two after this particular earthquake.

And I agree with yahya that a change in this direction is a political issue.

As some people mentioned, doing structural changes to Tehran, to make it earthquake resistant seems to be difficult and very expensive. But I think there are other things that could be done, to prevent a human catastrophe.
We do not know what to do in case of a big earthquake. This is true in different levels, the government, the rescue organizations and ordinary. There should be a what to do list in case of a human disaster for the government. "Helal Ahmar" and Fire departments should increase their capabilities to be able to face such a situation. I heard most of the Fire department buildings in Tehran are not anti-earthquake. So they need to be rescued themselves in case of an earthquake! And the last but not the least people should be educated about what to do in case of a earthquake. I do not remember any course or instructions in school about this. Someone suggested the idea of a "week or day of earthquake awareness", which could be very useful in educating people.
So I believe in addition to expensive, and seem-to-be-impossible fundamental changes in Tehran, there are other things that could be done, to prevent a disaster in Tehran.

JDFMASTER,
What I wrote in the previous post does not mean removing of a big city like Tehran.
By decentralizaton I meant decentralization in the political, economical and cultural structure
of iran as well. Tehran is actually a monster created by centralized way of thinking among the leaders of
our country before and after the revolution. Tehran is a symbol of unplanned, unscientific, mismanaged
canceric growth which is only concerned about the appearance not the foundations. The centralized process of dicision making
in our country manifested itself in every aspect of our social, cultural and political life, making it more and more
intolerable.
Again, nothing will happen unless ...

I wanted to clarify what Tautologist said for JDFMaster after I was done with a more urgent assignment, but apparently s/he has provided a reply herself/himself. Let me see... "The centralized process of dicision making in our country manifested itself in every aspect of our social, cultural and political life". Well put!

But let me add to Tautologist's list of "-al"s two more: "educational" and "medical", where s/he writes: "By decentralizaton I meant decentralization in the political, economical and cultural structure of [I]ran".

It seems to me that people from all over the country flock to Tehran in order to increase their chances, their opportunities, in a broad (and therefore vague) sense of the word. Having access to better doctors and medical facilities as well as better K-12 education and thus better future for their children may be two such opportunities.

Right now I can't think of many more items of similar import. If you can, please be kind enough to remind me, as you too are surely a reminder! ;-)

I guess America provides a nice real (as opposed to imaginary) model, as far as urban planning is concerned. Not that it is without its faults and flaws. Nor am I suggesting that such a model would work for Iran. (Imagine such a large number of Iranian drivers having to commute everyday through the highways leading to Tehran! What a chaos and what a pollution would result, indeed!)

To sum it up, the parameters that "lure" people to the capital should be identified and should then be distributed more wisely throughout the country. (How about some theme parks between Qum and Isfahan?!)

Someone said: "I do not remember any course or instructions in school about this." I do not remember either. But if I recall correctly we had in 2nd grade of the elemnetary school lessons in our Farsi book about what the red light meant and what the green light meant, and when and from where pedestrians should cross the streets. Did it help us abide by the traffic laws? It sure didn't. So my conlusion is that the inclusion of such stuff could *theoretically* be helpful, but as long as education in our country is conceived as nothing but an artificial hurdle to sieve the smart kids for the "easy" jobs and higher social status from the dumb ones who would end up doing the hard menial jobs such as being a firefighter, such introductions of material into our textbooks will not effect a change.

yahya:

Hoder's argument (the way you relate it to us) is flawed in so many levels that I don't even know where to begin. What is really the deal with trying to politicize everything? What's the use of such fingerpointings, the benefit this "blame game"? Of course an ideal democratic government is responsible for protecting the citizens, but is this the only, or the most important flaw of our government? Failing to protect people from the earthquake? I believe it isn't by far the worst. Sounds like some popular writers like to reap certain self-serving benefits from every possible situations that takes place in Iran.

P.S. While reading Hoder's post (in Persian), I couldn't help but wonder how someone would translate "KASHK" to English. (See the end of his 5th paragraph in the link yahya has provided.) I don't even know what KASHK (in its literal sense) is in English! Do you?

They use the Turkish version "kishk" in English and there is a ban on importing it to North America but they can rub their kish with theri regulations!

Anyway I am sure this tiny drop of knowledge will be incomparable to your grand ocean of knowledge, Senior.

"Kashk" can be translated as "dried yoghurt".

Dear all,

I suggest editors write a piece, so that we can comment on that and make a final version to release. The point is that letter (or whatever it may be) could be the beginning and we can continue by contacting specialists or NGOs,...

After many months of writing, commenting and arguing in this collective weblog, this would be the right time to see if for those of us who contribute to FToI, problems regarding Iran is more than just a hobby.

I really believe we should do something effective or who will?

You're funny, Kishk. :-) There is no trace of this word in dictionary.com . So I googled it: as it turns out, Kishk is some (Turkish?) snack which is different from Richard Bean's "dried yoghurt". (By the way, there are two kinds of KASHK in Iran: liquid and solid. Physicists in NASA have not yet found Kashk in its gaseous form on earth or elsewhere.) As a result of googling, it also turned out that there is an Islamic preacher called Sheikh Abdulhamid Kishk (spelled in Arabic script exactly the same was Kashk is spelled in Persian). I kid you not. Just google "kishk" and see for yourself.

Mehrad,

The problem is, I think, we need more ideas about what is going to be written and the possible or ideal function of such a statement and also how to release it or who is supposed to sign it. (I am still againt making a petition out of it: HAR SOKHAN JAA EE O HAR NOKTEH MAKAANI DAARAD!) It is not like we want to condemn the earthquake or the wrath of God or nature or something. That would be easy. Of course we may want to politicize the issue and condemn the government, but then people would only laugh at us, and nothing will come out of it. I also believe that we should do something effective, but what? I am personally at a loss.

"Kashk/kishik refers to certain dishes that were, and remain, popular in Iran, Turkey, and parts of the Arab world. However, the exact definition of the term raises problems for ethnologists, linguists and historians of the different regions of the Middle East. Behind an apparently trivial recipe lies a complex history of diffusion which throws remarkable light on the history of these regions... It is a preserved food all over the Middle East, but Persian kashk is quite different from the Arab kishik; among the Armenians of Turkey and generally in Anatolia it is a dish like herissa (pounded meat and cereal); in Egypt it is a sweetmeat."

Found by google at: http://www.languagehat.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=658

I agree that this is a political issue and unlike Senior Grad, I think it is important that we talk about it NOW. Times like these are unfortunately the very few that many of us can step out of their conspiracy theories or unrealistic ideals of confronting the west or bringing down Imperialism or the like, times when reality forces itself on them so tragically.
The way I see it we need to open up completely to the world of free trade in all levels. We need foreign investments and collaborations, and for that we first need to have a human regime that can do any of these.
My condolances to all.

It is clear that unless something is done quickly to significantly improve the urban earthquake risk of developing countries, earthquakes will cause increasingly greater human and economic losses in these countries, further delaying their development. But the problem is not so much the existence of great and rapidly increasing urban earthquake risk in developing countries as the persistence of this risk. The risk has been great and increasing over the last century and, compared with the risk in industrialized countries, not much has been done about it. It is not even widely acknowledged. This persistence cannot be explained or justified on the grounds that people in developing countries face a multitude of apparently more serious problems— war, hunger, unsafe water, AIDS, to name a few. Because these problems claim new victims every day and because their future victims are easily identified, they are salient in the minds of decision makers. This does not mean, however, that they are more important or more cost effective to solve. If the public and public officials of threatened countries knew of their earthquake risk, particularly for their children; knew of affordable means to reduce it; and knew that their risk was significantly greater than the risk from other problems, or than the earthquake risk of comparable communities, then they might urge that more be done to improve their communities' earthquake risk management. Unfortunately, public policy has not been based, even very loosely, on comparisons of either the magnitudes of problems or the improvements possible per dollar invested. With so little awareness of the problem and its solution, informed decisions are not possible. Based on observations over the last decade, it is believed that the disproportionately great urban earthquake risk in developing countries persists primarily because of a low awareness— in these countries and internationally— of that risk and of affordable means to manage it. This report summarizes one effort to correct this situation. The Global Earthquake Safety Initiative Pilot Project undertaken by GHI and UNCRD tested a method of assessing community earthquake safety. The objective of this method is to: (1) express urban earthquake risk in lay terms, (2) measure trends in the urban earthquake risk of the world’s major cities, (3) evaluate the effectiveness of various means of reducing earthquake casualties, and (4) highlight the increasing earthquake risk of schools of developing countries and the potential for reducing that risk. This method focuses on the risk of only life loss in earthquakes. Earthquakes cause many other important losses - including economic, political and cultural - which are not considered. The possible users of this method are primarily city, national, and international decision makers. The next chapter describes this method.

March 25, 2003

Click on the items listed in the left column. The untranslatable term KHARFAHM comes to mind.

http://www.eeri.org/news/nehrp/presentation/NEHRPCongressTestimonymay03_files/frame.html

Fortunately, there is a lot of material related to earthquakes and what to do about them provided by western applied scientists, and thanks to some of these guys we have internet and google.com and can retrieve the material and put it to good use. The remaining task (not to be underestimated) is to translate these documents and to then to *use* them. In one of my trivial comments I referred to the amazing site http://www.usgs.gov/ . There is a lot of good stuff buried there, and someone has got to dig them out. If you start from the page http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/prepare/future/reduce/ and click on the green arrow at the bottom of pages you will end up in the following treasury: http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/prepare/future/info/additional.html This is a document written in an easy to understand fashion and thus well worth being translated and somehow made available to Iranian public (with obvious modifications, of course. Replace "Bay Area", for example, by "Tehran").

This is however, I'm sure, not the only useful document available on this site, let alone on the internet. Now therefore, if AIS wants to do something effective I think s/he has her/his work cut out for her/him.

An idea I just ran into in my google searches is the idea of establishing an Earthquake Museum. Such a museum can be used for educating school children in their trips to the museum. A museum, unlike what may come to your mind, can be a lot more than a collection of destroyed or malformed objects and pictures of previous earthquakes. A museum can rather provide quite an educational atmosphere by taking advantage of audio-visual technology. (If you have been to some museums in Northern America, you may know what I am talking about.)

http://www.gsi-iran.org/

1. I want to thank Senior Grad for all his efforts and Mohammed for the e-mail he sent to authors.

2. Individual efforts and diverse suggestions may lead to nothing if we do not think of some sort of system to bring them together.

3. There should be some one to sort out these suggestions and if necessary tell others to do a part of the job. (translating documents for example)

4. "Is there anybody out there" who would like to managae this semi-project of ours?

Here's a satellite picture of Bam after the earthquake... (would take a while to load if your connection is below 56k)
http://www.fas.org/irp/imint/bam_quake122703.htm

[LINK]

Israel not only has the world's most experienced crews in quickly finding survivors in bombed out buildings, it is also a mere two-hour flight from Iran. In other words, no country in the world would come close to Israel in its ability to save Iranian lives quickly.

But none of this means anything to the rulers of Iran. The Islamic government of Iran has announced to the world that it is better for fellow countrymen and fellow Muslims -- men, women and children -- to die buried under rubble than to be saved by a Jew from Israel.

...

The two reactions -- Iran's preference for Iranian deaths to Israeli help and the Jewish state's instinctive offer to help save Iranian lives -- ought to be enough anyone needs to understand the source of the Middle East conflict. But they won't. Because those who are anti-Israel or "evenhanded" are not so because of the facts, but despite them.

The Israeli government doesn’t know a thing when it comes to human values. They have the most racist government in the world. I see that (their offer of “help”) similar to the condolences of Iranian government to Sep. 11. It's just a COVER for their dark nature! They kill children every day. Believe me the Palestinian children are as innocent as children in Bam. They can help them if they want to and Jenin is much more closer than Bam!

By the way if you search "conservative", townhall.com which you referred to is the third website that will appear. The first 2 websites are of course the "conservative party" websites of US and UK! So "in a way" your reference is to the MOST conservative news and information website that exists.

Well some news sources are conservative and so are some people. You can't do anything about it. It is like their skin color only more hidden!

I think whatever the resulting statement is, it must have a quite dispassionate tone, distanced from the heat of the moment, rationally argued and, if possible, scientifically backed, with related statistics and with minimum *explicit* reference to Bam's incident, thus covering a larger ground. (What would happen in case of a SARS outbreak in Iran, for example?) Of course, such a statement may not be ready in the course of a few days, weeks or months. I also think it must avoid blaming any agents (earthly or divine) for the catastrophe. That wouldn't lead anywhere. There must also be practical suggestions in that statement about what specifically must be done to prevent natural disasters in the future...

There is a very interesting article in the Jan 5th issue of the New Yorker that is unfortunately not available online. The title is "The Kingdom of Silence". I strongly recommend its reading for a comparative mini-study of two Islamic countries (i.e., Iran that we are from and Saudia Arabia). It would be great if a Persian newspaper (Shargh, for instance) could print a translation. There is a mention of an earthquake there, related to a sewage system, and how an Arab journalist helped raise awareness about the sewage problem...

Mehrad, can you please leave the stuff meant for the authors out of the reach of Senior? He already has enough nonesense to talk about.

What is double-chin talking about? :-)

I was by no means going to actually participate in writing the "statement" (What gave you that idea, Ghabghab?), not only because it is beyong the range of my abilities (which are mostly in the area of using Google and criticising the sh*t out of everything and everybody), but also, and more importantly, because I still have a very hazy idea of what exactly such a statement is meant to achieve that has not been achieved by other means, or other statements.

Could somebody shed a light, please?

Bam is too distant, its concerns too peripheral, for its agony to have much effect on building techniques in vulnerable cities like Tehran, where developers and regulators pay scant attention to best practice.

Wanna prove 'em wrong, fellas?

http://economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=2323539

Two friends pointed me to two useful links, one, is a paper in todays Washington post by a standfor prof about earthquake prevention and prediction:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50974-2004Jan2.html

and the other is the internet site for earthquake institute in Iran, which shows there are some serious research being done and the knowledge base is not as poor as one may think, but the challenge is mainly in implementation of preventive plans:
http://www.iiees.ac.ir/index.html

A piece of news (in Persian) about possible changing of the (political) capital of Iran:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/iran/story/2004/01/040105_he-terhanmove.shtml

http://emrooz.ws/ShowItem.aspx?Serial=4253&s=1

MIT ISG Publication on Earthquake Management in Iran

In light of the recent earthquake in Iran, the Iranian Studies Group at MIT (ISG) has published an informative report on earthquake management options strategies Iran. The report features expert opinion by Dr. Manuel Berberian, author of numerous scholarly articles on the subject. The report also contains a complete bibliography of articles related to seismology and earthquake risk assessment for Iran.

To access the document please visit
http://web.mit.edu/isg

I was wondering if Bam had any earthquakes before?
Here in Japan a earthquake that size hit the countryside last year with 1 death and little damage. The point I am trying to bring up is if If they haven't had any earthquakes before then who is safe?