At Least Five Injured in Quake in Southwest Iran

Date: 18 April 2021 - 22:59

News ID: ۸۹۳۲۱

TEH1RAN (Dispatches) -- A magnitude 5.9 earthquake shook southwestern Iran along the Persian Gulf on Sunday, followed by over a dozen aftershocks.
At least five people were injured, IRNA news agency reported. National TV shared mobile phone pictures of cracked and collapsed walls in the area of the port city of Bandar Genaveh, the temblor’s epicenter. People rushed into the streets of the city as the quakes struck, IRNA said.
Video shot by a bystander at an industrial site near Bandar Genaveh appeared to show landslides in nearby foothills. Three aftershocks of magnitude 4 followed the initial quake, the report said, as well as other weaker ones.
Hospitals in nearby cities and provinces were put on alert with rescue teams and 50 ambulances sent to the area, a regional official said. Electricity and landline telephone and internet in the regional city of Gonaveh were cut off, Tasnim news agency reported.
Iran’s First Vice-President Es’haq Jahangiri, in a phone call with the Bushehr provincial governor, called for the immediate care of quake victims, the ISNA news agency reported.
A magnitude 5 earthquake can cause considerable damage. Such shallow earthquakes as Sunday’s also can result in broader damage.
The quake was some 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant. ISNA quoted an official at the nuclear power plant saying the quake caused no damage and there were no disruptions in the plant’s operations. The facility was constructed to withstand earthquakes up to magnitude 8.
Iran is on major seismic faults and experiences one earthquake a day on average. In 2003, a magnitude 6.6 earthquake flattened the historic city of Bam, killing 26,000 people.
A magnitude 7 earthquake that struck western Iran in 2017 killed more than 600 people and injured more than 9,000.