The people of Iran are trembling and the officials are chanting slogans.

Sara.Kh.FCNN News Agency: People are shaking. Rumors are gaining strength and earthquakes that occur in different parts of the country at short intervals are fueling these rumors and fears. Houses are unsafe and the lack of resistance of residential houses, especially in villages, threatens the lives of millions of people. We live in a country that is largely located on a fault and is earthquake-prone. In the last two weeks, the occurrence of earthquakes has intensified in every corner of the country, but even in these circumstances, state authorities are throwing the ball in the people's court to mitigate this danger.

To assess the severity of the situation, we look at the earthquakes of the last two weeks.

Earthquakes in the last two weeks

Yesterday afternoon, Wednesday, an earthquake measuring 4.3 on the Richter scale shook the city of Avuj in Qazvin province.

At 10 p.m. last Wednesday, an earthquake measuring 3.14 on the Richter scale shook the center of Bent district in Sistan and Baluchestan province.

North Khorasan also experienced three natural disasters simultaneously last night.

The 3.9 magnitude earthquake at 2:53 AM in Bojnourd, flooding in Raz and Jargolan counties, and a fire in the Darekesh area in Maneh and Samalqan counties were among the events that caused a difficult night for our compatriots.

In addition, this Thursday morning, a storm with a force of 108 kilometers per hour hit the Sankhast region and a storm with a force of 106 kilometers per hour hit the Mane and Samalqan regions.

The residents of Zarand, Kerman, also experienced an earthquake measuring 4.9 on the Richter scale on Friday evening, October 10th of this year, and until today, Thursday, they have been shaken by repeated aftershocks measuring 3 and 2 on the Richter scale.

The first and subsequent earthquakes measuring 4.7 and 4.5 on the Richter scale on November 27 and 28 in this city caused injuries to a number of people and the destruction of non-resistant buildings.

The failure to provide relief to the victims of the Zarand earthquake has led to protest reactions on social media and public gatherings in public places in recent days.

The only reaction of Zarand authorities to these protests was the statements of Seyyed Mehdi Qavidel, the Public Prosecutor and Revolutionary Prosecutor of Zarand. In an interview with IRNA yesterday, Wednesday, referring to the protests, he emphasized: "People who try to spread false information in cyberspace with the intention of creating fear and concern among the people will be identified and dealt with. Investigations show that most of these people are not even in need and some attend these gatherings for adventure, and some are probably inciting these gatherings by planning to destroy the image of some officials. We are following up on this issue specifically."

Rumors also indicate that a magnitude 6 earthquake is predicted to occur in Mashhad. The head of the Seismology Research Center at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad has denied these rumors, but has confirmed this possibility due to the location of Khorasan Razavi Province on the fault.

According to this official, seismological devices located in the province record a large number of small and medium earthquakes in this region every day.
Based on this recorded information, the cities of Neyshabur, Quchan, Torbat Heydariyeh, and Kashmar are more at risk of earthquakes than Mashhad.

Meanwhile, news reports indicate that more than 10 earthquakes have been recorded in Khorasan Razavi in ​​the past month. More than 79 rural houses have been damaged in these earthquakes.

In any case, the ball is in the people's court.

There is no doubt that crisis management and the preparedness of the people and officials to prevent the escalation of damage in a country facing danger are of great importance. Housing retrofitting is one of the important components of this prevention.

Currently, the situation in Iran is such that the majority of houses that are not resistant to unexpected events, including earthquakes, are in rural areas. Statistics also confirm this evidence.

Meanwhile, we see that officials talk about the need for retrofitting, but they place the burden on the people and ask villagers to take action by taking advantage of bank facilities.

However, the ability of the country's villagers in the current situation is not commensurate with the cost of retrofitting their homes.

Country officials are well aware that drought and the lack of appropriate support make it impossible to continue agricultural and livestock activities in villages and cause poverty to spread.

However, villagers are being asked to use low-interest loans to make their homes more resilient. However, the level of acceptance by the country's villagers in the last decade indicates their ability and the effectiveness of these government facilities in making homes more resilient and reducing the risk of earthquakes in the country.

Evidence suggests that in the past 10 years, only 1.8 million villagers have been able to sign contracts with banks to improve their homes, while there are 5.2 million rural housing units in the country.

This is while, according to Azizollah Mahdian, Deputy Director of Rural Housing and Reconstruction of Disaster-Stricken Areas at the Islamic Revolution Housing Foundation, currently 60 percent of rural houses in the country are not earthquake-resistant. Thus, more than 15 million of our compatriots in the country's villages are at risk of earthquakes. If we add the number of non-earthquake-resistant urban houses to that, the severity of the situation becomes clearer.

Therefore, state officials are expected to occasionally glance from the windows of their safe houses at the conditions of millions of Iranians who shiver even on the calmest and warmest nights because they have not experienced any security under the roofs of insecure homes.