Why did Bam Break?
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| Tue, 12-30-2003 - 8:01pm |
David Aaronovitch
Tuesday December 30, 2003
The Guardian
The Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei yesterday managed to get to Bam, three days after the earthquake which may have killed 30,000 of his fellow Iranians. The president, Mohammad Khatami, followed soon afterwards. Khamenei had words of dubious comfort for survivors when he told them that "we will rebuild Bam stronger than before". Given the collapse of 80% of the buildings, from the old fortress to the new hospitals, the Iranian government could hardly make the new Bam as weak as the old one.
Some will see this as simply a natural disaster of the kind to which Iran, according to Khatami, is "prone". Four days earlier, however, there had been another earthquake of about the same intensity, this time in California. In which about 0.000001% of the buildings suffered serious structural damage and two people were killed when an old clocktower collapsed. So why the polar disparity between Bam and Paso Robles?
This is not a silly question. True, the Californians are much richer than the Iranians. But if you believed everything you read in the works of M Moore and others, you would anticipate a culture of corporate greed in which safety and regulation came way behind the desire to turn the quick buck. Instead you discover a society in which the protection of citizens from falling masonry seems to be regarded as enormously important.
Whereas in Iran - for all its spiritual solidarity - the authorities don't appear to give a toss. The report in this paper from Teheran yesterday was revealing. It was one thing for the old, mud-walled citadel to fall down, but why the new hospitals? An accountant waiting to give blood at a clinic in the capital told our correspondent that it was a "disgrace that a rich country like ours with all the revenue from oil and other natural resources is not prepared to deal with an earthquake".
The reformist Iran News asked on its website, "How many times have we reminded the ruling establishment that the first structures to fall during a major earthquake would be those dealing with emergency management and relief, such as hospitals, police and fire stations? The officials in charge are either deaf or simply don't care."
Iran had the money to do much of what was needed. After the Kobe earthquake of January 1995 a report concluded that most deaths had been caused by the collapse of housing built in the traditional Japanese manner. This style was based on a post-and-beam system, with tiles or thick mud laid on top. The roofs came down easily, and when they did, they crushed everything beneath. And exactly the same thing seems to have happened in Bam, as much to new as to old buildings. The use of corrugated iron roofs would have been much safer.
So why, despite the loss of 40,000 lives in the Gilan earthquake of 1990, had nothing been done? The same question was being asked back in the queue outside the clinic. Fariba Hemati told the Guardian what she thought of official efforts, "Our government is only preoccupied with slogans: 'Death to America', 'Death to Israel', 'Death to this and that'. We have had three major earthquakes in the past three decades. Thousands of people have died but nothing has been done. Why?"
As she was queueing Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, spokesman for Iran's interior ministry, was denying that a team from Israel was coming to help. "The Islamic Republic of Iran," he told the press, "accepts all kinds of humanitarian aid from all countries and international organisations, with the exception of the Zionist regime." The Israelis, of course, have some reputation for rescue work, but it was ideology rather than humanity that was at stake here.
The answer to Hemati is that, after a quarter of a century, Iran is still being ruled by a useless, incompetent semi-theocracy, which is fatalistic, complacent, unresponsive and often brutal. And such a system does not deliver to its citizens one fraction of what the Great Satan, for all its manifest faults, manages to guarantee to ordinary Americans.
Following the fall of the Berlin wall there was, as the philosopher John Gray put it, a "false dawn" of the New Age of Liberal Democracy, in which all problems everywhere could be expected to be solved by a free market and free elections. But this triumphalism has been replaced, in some quarters at least, by the equally vacuous tropes of the anti-globalisation movement and its demonisation of liberal capitalism.
What, I wonder, has Arundhati Roy to say now about the superiority of traditional building methods over globalised ones? Some Iranians might think that it's a shame there wasn't a McDonald's in Bam. It would have been the safest place in town.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1113895,00.html

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Much easier to hate a tangible outside target than an 'act of God'.
Renee
This is a rather strange statement (apples and oranges?)
>>"Four days earlier, however, there had been another earthquake of about the same intensity, this time in California. In which about 0.000001% of the buildings suffered serious structural damage and two people were killed when an old clocktower collapsed. So why the polar disparity between Bam and Paso Robles?"<<
Bam was a whole lot older than Paso Robles, and the buildings in Paso Robles that were damaged were built before all the seismic regulations were put in place.
Elaine
I have a hard time understanding second-world countries that do not seem as efficient as the United States in terms of public safety, but I don't think we can completely blame the fact that they are a "theocracy" on this. Many secularized countries continue to build horrible structures and lose thousands in earthquakes. Here's a list of earthquake mortalities in the past century:
http://gldss7.cr.usgs.gov/neis/eqlists/eqsmajr.html
Architecture and construction are practically a science in the US, and everything built here must meet rigorous safety codes. The average person is trained to understand and worry about structural safety. It is unfair to compare our situation to that of a place like Bam.
New construction in CA withstood the quake very well; new construction in Iran including hospitals, police, and fire stations crumbled just like the old. Why?
Why has so much of the city crumbled when in '95, they saw what happened to post & beam contruction with heavy roofs when Kobe was devastated by an earthquake? Why when the govt was warned that emergency buildings wouldn't stand up to this sort of thing, didn't they alter the construction plans? Since the city has been wiped out many times by earthquakes before, why wasn't emergecny preparedness and response an issue? Why did they disreguard the advice of the Nat'l Seismological Center? Why has the earthquake exposed a corrupt system run by greedy mullahs on the take? When old buildings can be retrofitted to make them nearly as safe as new constructions, why didn't they bother?
Why does an oil rich earthquake prone country need to rely on the international community for rescue efforts, cleanup, and reconstruction? Why are highly trained rescue teams from Japan and California in Bam right now? Will an Iranian rescue team be on hand after 'the bit one' hits California?
Why have 40,000 Iranians been killed and 50,000 injured when in 1990 40,000 people died in a similar earthquake? To answer that one, you might want to think about why 6,000 people were killed by a hurricane in Galesveston in 1908 while a much bigger hurricane only killed 2 ninety years later with a much higher population density.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=37292&d=31&m=12&y=2003
http://beta.kpix.com/news/local/2003/12/28/CA_Learns_Lessons_from_Quakes_Around_the_World.html
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell.html
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=1981
Renee
Apples = Bam is thousands of years old.
Elaine
The earthquake in Iran was 2 miles deeper with much more damage than the one in San Simeon, CA. I understand that countries outside of the USA have buildings that have been in existence for hundreds or even thousands of years, but these countries need to understand that buildings that are built of brick masonry or mud will collapse sooner or later, and are extremely unsafe to live in if you are in an earthquake area, that is why it is better to either tear them down or rebuild them with safer materials. It is very sad that in a country like Iran that so many people had to be killed in this earthquake, when clearly the one in CA had only 2 killed, but did not have the same construction that Iran had.
I live in Southern California in fact I live in the San Andreas fault zone area. When the earthquake hit in San Simeon which is about 300 miles north of me I felt it. A 6.5 is a very large earthquake, and if you do not have safety regulations in place when the earthquake hits, we will see the damage that we saw in Iran. It is unfortunate 2 people were killed, but at the same time it is unbelievable that only 2 were killed in such a large earthquake. The women were killed as they tried to run out of the building as the roof and the old clock tower collapsed, and they were 40 miles from the center of the earthquake. That’s why sometimes it is better to stay inside the building, and wait it out, but that would depend on the age of the building and the construction materials. The area where the earthquake hit in San Simeon is not a very high populated area, and you must take into account other facts like how deep the quake was and what kind of soil you sit on. Then if you are along the coast you will have the dreaded Tsunami. Hopefully countries like Iran will learn from this, and try and rebuild their old buildings, and bring them up to code, so they are safer for their people, so we don’t see the high death counts like Iran. There is no reason Iran can not build safer buildings they are educated and a rich country.
I guess what I'm asking is why there is so little concern for human life there? We can't put it off on ignorance or poverty like we do most of the time.
Renee
Most countries in Europe, the Pacific Rim, and the Anglosphere, have strict building codes. The areas in these countries which are prone to earthquakes, study them, observe them, plan for them, and learn from how other countries deal with them.
Iran is also earthquake prone, and Bam has been completely destroyed six or seven times. The last time the whole place was raised was the turn of the century and then about 40 years ago, there was another big one that did almost as much damage. About 10 years ago, another 40,000 people where killed by an earthquake elsewhere in Iran.
Why is it that they aren't bothering to learn from their own experiences or those of other countries? Why isn't newer construction built to w/stand quakes and why aren't the older buildings retrofitted? A California prof said older buildings can be made nearly as safe as new ones.
40,000 people did not have to die; 50,000 people did not have to be injured; Iran did not have to loose it's historical treasures, so why did this happen. I don't think it's just the fault of corrupt mullahs. Things didn't seem to be different under the shah or even going back to the further. They just continue doing what they've always done and keep getting the same results. Even before technology was very far along, when western cities were severely damaged by fire or flood or something else, they experimented with new construction methods and matierials and developed new building codes in an effort to prevent a similar experiences. That's why both London & Chicago were rebuilt in brick after devastating fires burned down the traditional wood structures.
Renee
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