June 16, 2017
Two villages leveled by an earthquake in Khorasan North province last month will be abandoned and rebuilt from scratch at another location.
“After visiting the villages, our experts said the risk of land subsidence in the area is high and therefore rebuilding the quake-hit villages on the same sites would serve no purpose,” the state news agency quoted Hossain Azimi, director general of the provincial Crisis Management Office, as saying.
“The new locations have been determined and funds for the construction are under review,” said Azimi. He did not reveal the new locations of the villages or how far the new sites are from the old sites. Moving far from the subsidence raises the question of whether the farmers can get as much new land of the same quality as the old land for farming.
The villages are Pesar Kanlou in the Bojnurd region and Qarechai in the Samalqan-Maneh area. The news report said the villagers had accepted the relocation plan.
Azimi said, “The land in the area saw several meters of subsidence during the earthquake and are at risk of further subsidence due to the soft texture of the clay soil in the region.”
Three more villages in Bojnurd County are also prone to land subsidence and may need to be relocated, he said.
On May 13, a 5.7-magnitude earthquake occurred in and around Bojnurd, killing three people and leaving more than 400 injured. The quake damaged many buildings in the area. The epicenter was just 50 kilometers from the border with Turk-menistan.
Historically, Iranian villagers have commonly abandoned a village site after a serious earthquake and moved to a new site, though the new site might be only a hundred meters or so from the old site. Those relocations aren’t due to subsidence, but just the ease of starting anew away from the rubble.
Official figures show that during the past 100 years 13 earthquakes stronger than 5.5 on the Richter scale were registered in Khorasan North. In 1995, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit the province killing and injuring hundreds of people.