Hello Farhad......There has not been much success in my opinion at predicting earthquakes on the short term...meaning, that if you heard that someone had said that there would be a large earthquake in some particular location on a particular day or particular week, I would not believe them. Canie offered some good advice. I know nothing about faults and earthquakes in Iran....but, if you look at some historical record of damage in your city over the last 1000 or 2000 years, then that might give some guidance on how often you likely to have a damaging earthquake.

The following is directed at Canie and other regulars at this page: might the situation on what you should do in an earthquake be rather different in a very poorly-constructed apartment building, vs a mud-brick house, vs a well-contructed and designed modern building, vs a well-built wood-frame 1 or 2 story house? The idea that you don't run out of a building is because in the U.S you are more likely to be killed or injured by something falling off the outside of the building than that the building will collapse. But, in Bam, if you could get out of you mud brick building (in the 2 or 3 s that you might have had), you would be much better off to get out. Or, let's say that there was a very large earthquake, say, a M7.5, with epicenter maybe 50 km away, that ruptured towards you. And, you are on bad ground in a mud-brick building. The "P" wave would arrive quite a few seconds or more ahead of the more damaging S wave...and the most damaging part of the S wave would take a couple more seconds. If you were awake and near the door, you might grab a kid and get out.

Like Canie sugesting that you get under something strong, after the BAM quake I thought that something like a safe room in a house in the US to protect from tornados might be a good idea....that there be some cage-like structure within a room of the house that could withstand a collapse...that a family might be able to dive into....or have their kids sleep in, or whatever....but, if an area has a devastating quake only, say, every 1000 years, how likely is it that this will be done?....But, along a highly active fault (like the North Anatolia fault), it might be something to think about.

Qualifier: I have no expertise in construction, earthquake safety, etc, so should not be taken more seriously than some other person posting on this page (probably in this thread). Chris