History Repeats

Think of it as an aftershock — 14 months after the main temblor. In the early hours of last Tuesday morning, the earth around the town of Zarand, in Iran's Kerman province, was convulsed by a quake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale. Its epicenter was just 250 km northwest of Bam, where a violent tremor killed some 31,000 people in December 2003. This time, the death toll will be significantly lower. Zarand and the 50 villages affected have a total population of 30,000 and Kerman's deputy governor Mohammad-Javad Fadaee has confirmed more than 600 fatalities so far. Yet statistics cannot convey the implacability of the devastation: at least five villages have been erased. "People had actually built their houses into the mountain," says unicef country representative Kari Egge from Houtkan, a village thought to have lost half of its 800 inhabitants, "so they were just collapsing and sliding down the slopes."

The aftershocks continue — 50 since Tuesday, according to the Geological Survey of Iran — amid mounting fear that the biggest of all may be yet to come. Iran sits on a major rift; its capital, Tehran, nestles on a spaghetti junction of fault lines. Mohsen Ghafory-Ashtiany, head of Iran's International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology estimates that "the possibility of an earthquake measuring more than six on the Richter scale occurring now in Tehran is about 90%." "The government must have more oversight on new building constructions, making sure they obey safety codes," adds Abdollah Saidi of the Geological Survey of Iran. And a debate about moving the capital — and its 12 million inhabitants — has flared again. Ashtiany says the idea diverts attention from achievable goals. "We have to work to strengthen structures and reduce risk," he says. "The tsunami showed us that disasters don't know borders."