Post-earthquake Fires and a Hazard Mitigation Plan for Tehran

Considering the rapid growth of cities and quick pace of urbanization of small towns in many of sejsmically high risk areas of the world (such as Iran) in the past century, risk of widespread fires and conflagrations following carthquakes has drastically increased. This paper primarily deals with the causal relationship for the gas and electric fires. Event tree models of interior gas and electrical systems are presented. Numerous problems involved with emergency response following earthquakes are discussed. Potential problems in dealing with post-earthquake fire range from damage to lifelines, such as utilities, to damage to emergency response systems. Fire stations therefore, tend to be the first line of defense in such scenarios. With high seismic risk of Tehran in mind, a plan for increasing the level of earthquake preparedness has been proposed where increasing the safety of the fire stations and speed of their response is the main objective. To this end plans were made for evaluation and structural strengthening of all of Tehran's fire stations.