Qualla: 2018 Sarpol-e Zahab Earthquake

2018 Sarpol-e Zahab Earthquake: Introduction

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Uwe Dedering, CC BY-SA 3.0. The ground had barely stopped shaking from the last one. On November 12, 2017, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake had struck Kermanshah Province in western Iran, killing more than 600 people and leveling entire neighborhoods. Thirteen months later, on the evening of Sunday, November 25, 2018, the earth moved again. A magnitude 6.3 tremor centered fifteen kilometers southwest of Sarpol-e Zahab sent residents -- many of whom still lived in temporary shelters from the previous disaster -- running into the streets. The city sits near the Iraqi border in the western Zagros Mountains, a seismically active zone where the Arabian and Eurasian tectonic plates grind against each other with slow, relentless force.

Image: Uwe Dedering | CC BY-SA 3.0

2018 Sarpol-e Zahab Earthquake: A Sunday Evening Shattered

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The earthquake struck at 20:07 local time in Iran, 19:37 across the border in Iraq. The United States Geological Survey measured it at magnitude 6.3, with a shallow depth of approximately ten kilometers -- shallow enough to amplify the shaking at the surface. Over 700 people were...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

2018 Sarpol-e Zahab Earthquake: Living on a Fault Line

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sarpol-e Zahab occupies ancient ground. The name itself derives from a bridge over the Alvand River, with the suffix Zahab referring to the area's abundance of springs and wetlands. Rock reliefs from the Lullubi kingdom, dating to the third millennium BCE, are carved into the cli...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

2018 Sarpol-e Zahab Earthquake: Aftershock of an Aftershock

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. The 2018 earthquake was, in seismological terms, not a direct aftershock of the 2017 event -- it occurred on a separate fault segment. But for the people of Sarpol-e Zahab, the distinction was academic. Many were still displaced from the earlier catastrophe, living in containers ...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0

2018 Sarpol-e Zahab Earthquake: The Mountains Remember

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mikenorton, CC BY-SA 3.0. Kermanshah Province, with a population of nearly two million, has endured earthquakes throughout recorded history. The Zagros range that gives the region its dramatic topography -- steep valleys, exposed rock faces, terraced hillsides -- is also the mechanism of its recurring des...

Image: Mikenorton | CC BY-SA 3.0