Since the massive 2003 Bam quake, Iran has been relatively quiet seismically. It has suffered only 10 quakes with fatalities. In the last 7 1/2 years prior to Saturday’s quake, only 103 Iranians have died in earthquakes, an unusually low number for that long a period. There were no fatalities reported from earthqiake in Iran in 2007, 2009 and 2011.
The last super-quake in Iran was the one that leveled Bam December 27, 2003. The death toll there was put at 27,000. It was recorded at magnitude 6.6
Here are the 10 quakes with fatalities since the Bam earthquake:
Locale Scale Date Dead
Chalus 5.5 05/28/04 35
Zarand 6.4 02/22/05 612
Qeshm 5.9 11/27/05 10
Lorestan 6.0 03/30/06 70
Qeshm 6.1 09/10/08 7
Lamerd 5.8 07/21/10 1
Damghan 5.9 08/27/10 3
Fars 6.1 09/26/10 1
Fahraj 6.5 12/20/10 11
E. Azer. 6.3 08/11/12 306 That is a death toll of 1,056 in a little less than nine years since Bam.
The deadliest earthquake to strike Iran in modern times killed an estimated 37,000 people June 21, 1990, brutalizing Gilan and Zanjan provinces.
There may have been some worse quakes in earlier eras, but death toll figures are very unreliable. A 1780 quake in Tabriz is thought to have killed from 50,000 to 200,000 persons. The published tolls from the 1990 quake and the 2003 Bam quake are themselves subject to question.
In 2000, the Interior Ministry said a study showed that 86 percent of Iran’s people live atop faults.