earthquake An earthquakealso called a quake, tremor, or tembloris the shaking of the Earth's surface resulting from a sudden release of energy in the lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from those so weak they ...

affected several villages in the

Kerman province Kerman province () is the largest of the 31 provinces of Iran. Its capital is the city of Kerman. The province is in the southeast of Iran. In 2014 it was placed in Region 5. Mentioned in ancient times as the Achaemenid satrapy of Carma ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

on February 22, 2005, at . The shock measured 6.4 on the

moment magnitude scale The moment magnitude scale (MMS; denoted explicitly with or Mwg, and generally implied with use of a single M for magnitude) is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude ("size" or strength) based on its seismic moment. was defined in a 1979 paper ...

and had a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (''Severe''). Zarand is located 740 km southeast of

Tehran Tehran (; , ''Tehrân'') is the capital and largest city of Iran. It is the capital of Tehran province, and the administrative center for Tehran County and its Central District (Tehran County), Central District. With a population of around 9. ...

. The maximum recorded

peak ground acceleration Peak ground acceleration (PGA) is equal to the maximum ground acceleration that occurred during earthquake shaking at a location. PGA is equal to the amplitude of the largest absolute acceleration recorded on an wikt:accelerogram, accelerogram at a ...

was 0.51 ''g'' at Shirinrud dam. The United States'

National Earthquake Information Center The National Earthquake Information Center (abbreviated NEIC) is part of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) located on the campus of the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado. The NEIC has three main missions: * First, the NEIC de ...

and Belgium's

Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) is a research unit of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain). It is part of the School of Public Health located on the UCLouvain Brussels Woluwe campus, in Brussels, Belgium. CRED has ...

both show that 612 died and 1,411 were injured in the event.

Damage and casualties

Four villages, each having around 1,000 inhabitants, were reported completely destroyed, and 30% to 70% of buildings in more than 40 villages were reported damaged. It is estimated that the population of the affected area exceeds 30,000. A great portion of population of several villages are severely affected because of poor condition of buildings. The epicenter of the quake was in a mountainous and sparsely inhabited area. It is believed that the death toll could have been much higher if the quake had stricken a more densely populated area like Bam.

Previous events

The region of Zarand is close to an active fault, known as the Kuhbanan fault in the north east of the city. Its trend is northwest–southeast and its length is 160 km. Zarand has been hit by several quakes in the last 70 years, with the oldest recorded one going back to 1933. On December 20, 1977, at 04:34

Iran Standard Time Iran Standard Time (IRST) or Iran Time (IT) is the time zone used in Iran. Iran uses a UTC offset UTC+03:30. IRST is defined by the 52.5 degrees east meridian, the same meridian which defines the Iranian calendar and is the official meridian of ...

(23:34 December 19 UTC), the area was hit by a 6.2-magnitude earthquake leaving 521 dead and 3 villages completely destroyed. On December 26, 2003, another devastating earthquake happened in Bam, 200 km southwest of Zarand, which is in the same province.

References

External links

* International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent bulletins on Zarand earthquake (

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

files)
No.1No.2No.3
an
No.4

M6.4 – central Iran
–

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), founded as the Geological Survey, is an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior whose work spans the disciplines of biology, geography, geology, and hydrology. The agency was founded on Mar ...

Earthquake Near Zarand, Iran
–

NASA Earth Observatory NASA Earth Observatory is an online publishing outlet for NASA which was created in 1999. It is the principal source of satellite imagery and other scientific information about the climate and the environment which are being provided by NASA for ...

Hundreds killed in Iranian quake
– BBC News
Race to reach Iran quake victims
– BBC News
Rain slows Iran quake aid effort
– BBC News
'No-one knew what to do'
– BBC News
Brief characteristics of Active faults in Kerman Province
– National Geoscience Database of Iran * * {{DEFAULTSORT:2005 Zarand Earthquake 2000s disasters in Iran 2005 disasters in Asia Zarand earthquake Zarand earthquake Earthquakes in Iran February 2005 in Iran Kerman province

Damage and casualties

Previous events

See also

References

External links