Iran’s only nuclear station was hit by a powerful earthquake on April 9, 2013, which has killed 37 people and injured 850. The quake which measured 6.3 on the Richter scale has also devastated homes and two small villages.
A Red Crescent official confirmed that the earthquake had destroyed at least one village. Iranian officials and a Russian company which built the nearby Bushehr nuclear plant, said that the facility is undamaged.
Ferrey Hassanvand, the governor of Busherhr said, “Due to the intensity of this earthquake, this tragedy has deepened and we have seen the destruction of many homes in the region, the deaths of 37 people and more than 850 injured”. Many of the houses in the rural areas were made of mud bricks and were easy to crumble in the quake.
A Russian state news agency said that personnel continue to work in the normal regime and radiation levels are fully within the norm. Electricity and water lines have been severed and communities have stayed in the streets due to a threat of aftershocks. The quake that hit Iran was not as powerful as the one that hit Japan in 2001, which triggered a tsunami and left the Fukushima nuclear power plant crippled.
