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| Sunday, 4 January 2004 |
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Iran to prosecute over building law breaches in Bam BAM, Iran, (Reuters) Iranian military engineers said on Friday they had uncovered violations of building regulations in the earthquake-devastated city of Bam and that those responsible would be prosecuted. About 90 percent of the mostly mud-brick buildings in the ancient Silk Road city collapsed in last Friday's quake, killing at least 30,000 people in one of the world's worst natural disasters in recent decades. "We have seen some violations and they are being reported to the Justice Department," Hamid Eskander, head of a fact-finding team of about 100 engineers from Iran's Revolutionary Guards, told Reuters. "People we suspect of not doing their job properly will be contacted and prosecuted," said Eskandar, a U.S.-educated specialist in earthquakes. "There are a good number of cases where there were violations in terms of construction practices, engineering practices, and perhaps even faulty inspections." Quake-prone Iran -- situated on several fault lines in the earth's structure -- has tightened building regulations in recent years, but the measures have been widely ignored, officials and engineers have said. Even modern state buildings collapsed in the quake, which measured 6.8 on the Richter scale. The mass collapse of Bam's buildings has been blamed for the high death toll. Quakes of similar force in other countries have caused far fewer deaths. |
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