Hi Chris,

The future of Bam is in the hands of the Iranian government. I am absolutely positive they understand what construction techniques are required, but as to what they allow may be something else. It also remains possible that Bam may never be rebuilt as it appears to be a total loss. The temple which was the main tourist attraction is no longer and at least 80% of the buildings in the town are gone, so perhaps they will go elsewhere. We also have a disproportionate resident structure. In some cases only children survived with no parents, et cetera, so there may not be enough family units either.

Regarding the mud slides, I probably heard this because I live in CA, but there were repeated warnings to everyone in that area about mud slides. From what I understand it was occurring with every rainfall and especially before this last storm. The camp you mentioned was not open. Only the caretaker and his family were living there at the time. But some unauthorized people were there. As to whether or not the State of CA should have forced those folks from their homes until the last storm passed is another question. The alternatives would have been to install special monitoring equipment or send qualified staff to monitor.

We should also remember that during the fires which struck these areas people would not leave when they needed to and died unnecessarily. This is nothing new as it has happened time and again. I have to wonder if our sense of danger has been lost in exchange for holding onto our personal possessions.

One day we are all going to have to come to terms in living in high risk natural disaster areas. I wonder why places which have tornados or hurricanes allow folks to live in mobile homes for instance? This seems rather nuts to me. This can be changed by simply not allowing any new mobile homes to replace the existing structures and in time, they would no longer be there.

I say let's give everyone in the world the Egg Shaped House and we could all live safely.

Petra