Earthquake in bam

An earthquake of magnitude 6.7, almost the same magnitude as the Seattle earthquake of 2001, occurred on December 26, 2003 on Friday, a day off for Muslims at 05:26 a.m. local time. At this time, the city of Bam was only waking up, and many people met their death in a dream. Walls of adobe bricks collapsed around the perimeter of houses and people instantly found themselves buried alive with heavy roofs and fragments of walls. The earthquake focus was located at a depth of eight kilometers, ten kilometers from Bam, i.e. almost under the city itself. Concussions at the epicenter reached IX points on the MSK-64 scale. Iranian authorities said that 5,500 earthquake victims were buried in common graves per day. Three days later, a representative of the armed forces of Iran, who were engaged in the burial of the dead, said that they buried 20 thousand people. Four days later, from under the rubble, the number of dead bodies reached 30 thousand. Local cemeteries were crowded and the dead were buried in mass graves. Residential buildings either collapsed completely, turning into a chaotic pile of ruins, or suffered so thoroughly that their restoration was impossible. Massive destruction of residential buildings occurred due to non-compliance with elementary construction rules in seismically active zones. The quality of the masonry and especially the mortar were insufficient to ensure the resistance of buildings to seismic shocks. Most of the houses were a kind of mud huts with a heavy clay roof. Others are built of poor-quality and insufficiently aged brick in firing ^[1] .

The ancient city of Bam ( Kerman province, Iran ) suffered a devastating earthquake (6.3 points), which killed about 35 thousand people (although the Iranian Minister of Health reported 70 thousand victims ^[2] ) and injured more than 22 thousand (out of 200 thousand population). About 90% of the clay structures of the historic city were destroyed ^[3] . The aftermath of the earthquake was so massive because many houses were clay and did not comply with 1989 local standards.

Iranian authorities have appealed to the world community for help. To overcome the consequences of the disaster, 44 countries sent assistance personnel and 60 countries offered assistance.

As a result, the Iranian government decided to build a new city instead of the destroyed old one, which caused protests from survivors of this earthquake.

Panorama of ancient Bam.