January 03-2014
It was 10 years ago last Thursday—the day after Christmas—that a massive earthquake struck the city of Bam in the pre-dawn hours, killing about a quarter of its population.
The city is still struggling to rebuild, though it is far from the rubble-strewn disaster it was the first few years after the quake.
It was a 6.6 magnitude quake, far from a record but plenty strong enough to break up poorly built structures. And it came in the night, when almost everyone was sound asleep. The buildings fell in on them, raising the death toll that would have been much less had the quake chosen to come after dawn.
The numbers of the dead vary, though the government has settled on 26,000 dead and 75,000 made homeless. About 80 percent of the city’s structures were damaged, if not leveled. And the giant mud-walled fort that has looked down over the city for centuries simply crumbled.
Specialists who are painstakingly rebuilding the Bam citadel say the city’s architectural masterpiece will never return to its past glory, but are hopeful they will restore some of it.
The pre-Islamic desert citadel was the largest structure in the world made of un-baked clay brick.
“Bam will never be rebuilt exactly the way it was,” said Afshin Ebrahimi, the manager of the citadel reconstruction project.
T he modern city will never be the same either—but no one is complaining about that. A new quakeproofed Bazaar has been built on the site of the old one that crumbled in the quake. New homes framed with steel have been built where mud-brick prevailed before. Japanese engineers have re-built the water system. And the French helped to build a modern hospital.
A ceremony to mark the 10th anniversary of the city’s near-death experience was held in the new sports complex, which includes a 6,000-seat stadium.
The citadel, in much smaller form, can be traced back to the sixth century BC but reached its apogee from the 7th to 11th centuries as it sat on the Silk Road and other major trade routes.
A decade after the quake, only part of the massive site has been rebuilt, while wooden scaffolding can be seen along the outer walls.
“We are not aiming at rebuilding the citadel as it was before the quake. We can never do that,” Ebrahimi, who is carrying out the work for Iran’s culture and heritage authorities, told Agence France Presse (AFP).
“The quake, like the local architecture, is part of our history,” he said, adding that certain parts of the citadel would be rebuilt while others would merely be stabilized, to reflect the disaster.
Two rows of arches located a hundred meters from the entrance give visitors a glimpse inside of the work being done. On one side they can see the original architecture and on the other the renovation.
More than 100 people work on the site each day, alongside 20 Iranian specialists and others who have come to lend a hand from France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
Japan contributed $500,000 and provided equipment to clear the rubble and carry out restoration work. “We are the best equipped team in the world,” said Ebrahimi.
The Japanese experts are working on a 3D map of the site, while their French and Italian counterparts are focusing on making mud and cement bricks designed to endure future quakes. “The work will never end,” said Ebrahimi. “We are trying to preserve the site but, if it rains on an adobe wall, we must rebuild it all over again.” Fortunately, there isn’t much rain in Bam.
Survivors who lost family members in the quake are still haunted by memories of the tragedy, Ebrahimi said.
“To see the citadel being reborn has a soothing effect. This is a very special project; it is very emotional. It is not just a renovation workshop,” he said.
Ebrahimi hopes that restoring the citadel will bolster tourism.
Bam Governor Hossain Zain-ol-Salehi expressed satisfaction with the pace of the work, saying reconstruction must be done in a “prudent and appropriate” fashion.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said there had been improvements in the site’s management and conservation, and therefore removed Bam from UNESCO’s list of “World Heritage in Danger.” Being on it was viewed as an embarass-ment in Iran.
“This is a great honor for Bam,” said the governor, because “it shows that the right steps have been taken to rebuild the citadel.”
Akbar Panjalizadeh agrees, and has rebuilt his tourist hostel and created more room to be ready for the return of vacationers.
Panjalizadeh says he dreams of seeing 10 or even 15 tour buses parked outside the citadel. But for the time being, he gets only 10 clients a week, half the number who came a decade ago, and not near enough to fill even one bus.
But the governor notes that the scars from the quake haven’t gone away. Many residents, he says, are still in need of psychological support given the trauma they experienced that day. Where a survivor is his or her family’s sole survivor, there is often a massive and oppressive feeling of guilt.
And after surviving a 6.6 shake, every little tremor sends a chill up many spines.
Some doubt the state’s assurances that the buildings are quake proof. Yasser, a 26-year-old who sells DVDs in the Bazaar, is one of those. “We see new cracks after every jolt,” he says.
Ali Moshki, who lost six family members in the quake, says, “It’s always the same. We are always afraid, even after a little quake.”
But the city is growing. The city proper—not including the outlying villages that were also hit by the quake—had a population of 90,000 a decade ago. Now it is up to 107,000, the governor reports.
Part of the draw is a new auto assembly plant built by Cherry of China.