OK, this post should be right up Petra's alley. I disagree strongly with EQF's assertion that you will save more lives with prediction than with careful construction (maybe not quite what he said), and Petra's assertion that nothing could have been done for Bam. The iceland prediction is a little misleading-I think this was a special case of a series of pairs of earthquakes there-the first one occurred and they expected another. While I am more optinistic about prediction than, say, Don is, there is not in sight a way to predict that would have gotten the people in Bam out of their houses-sure, it was done in China in 1975, but it's not going to be done regularly that way. I don't know anything about Iran fault structure, but the earthquake was on a strike-slip fault. I think these faults are already known-most shallow strike-slip faults have surface outcrops. If I wanted to spend the time, I could probably download a 30 m DEM (digital elevation model) and find the fault, and maybe even stream/ravine offsets showing that it is active. People on the ground could find places to trench and get at slip rates and recurrence intervals.

Just looking at the coarse topography and earthquakes since 1990:
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_cvad_h.html
You can see that Bam is on mountains aligned with earthquakes-a study of historical earthquakes (last 2000 years) may already have been done, or may not have, but could better define what is active. I think Iran has the resources to have done something-at least keep people from making new houses in the last 30 years by piling rocks on top of each other or whatever.

So, what should be done now? Prevent people from rebuilding by just using the rubble with the same methods. Maybe provide a bunch of core frames for people to sleep in-they can take something solid in metal, strong plastic, whatever, and go ahead and pile bricks/rocks on outside as long as the core is strong enough to resist collapse. Identify other towns and cities at risk and do something similar-watch new construction, and do something simple with old construction-help people to build a safe sleeping room(s) inside their house. It is probably Geologists who would have to push for this to happen. Groups like Geological Society of America, American Geophysical Union, Seismological Society of America can write editorials like what I am posting here (except better researched), but Iran has geologists and it is on them to go visit the villages/towns/cities at risk.

Which leads me to the California mudslides. This was entirely preventable. Any geologist with any broad competence would only have needed to look at the weather forecast and then the radar to know that there was a high risk of such a mudflow. But, there was apparently non-existent communication on this. The people running the religious camp or whatever it is may well not have known what risk they were putting people in. The County or state needed to have a mechanism to evacuate these burnt-over places when heavy rain is imminent.

I was watching the Weather Channel a few years ago during Hurricane Mitch, and the meteorologists recognized that there would be problems-it was clear to me. But, this did not lead to protection of life....and I think 10,000 people died. And, later, they did not need to be plucking people out of trees in Mozambique-if they had just monitored the stream and river levels upstream and looked at a DEM of what is downstream.......But, in that case it would be difficult to get in the field and tell people where to move-and they might have to walk out.....Chris