Dubai Municipality brushes aside fears on impact of recent earthquakes in Dubai

Dubai, July 22, 2010 (WAM)- Dubai Municipality's Local Earthquake Monitoring Network, which monitored a set of earthquakes, occurred recently in southern Iran and 220 km north-west of Dubai, has found no significant impact of the tremor in the emirate.
The network recorded the main tremor with 5.7 on the Richter scale at 11.38pm on Tuesday, 20th July, which did not cause any casualties. Some residents of high-rise towers in Dubai felt a slight tremor of short duration.
Mohammed Mashroom, Director of Survey Department in the Municipality said some small tremors before the main quake near the same area were also detected and some of the aftershocks of this earthquake were also monitored. This activity was located on the seismic belt areas stretching north-west parallel to the Zagros mountain range, as a result of the collision of Arabian plate with the Eurasian plate.
He pointed out that these areas are within the seismic belts, but such powers of the earthquake did not affect the facilities in Dubai as its designs are in accordance with the Code of earthquakes.
Mashroom assured the residents of the emirate that there was no impact of such seismic activity due to the emirate's distance from Iran.
Dubai Municipality had launched the first system in the UAE to monitor the movements of the earth's crust according to the latest technologies in the field of seismology, which consists of four field stations, which always had a wide range.
Each station contains a device to record the seismic activity and another device for recording acceleration of the earth as these stations are distributed in different parts of the emirate.
It also supports different bodies with these data such, including the National Centre for Seismology, Abu Dhabi, Dubai Police, Civil Defence and others. These regional activities are studied and followed up in real time. – Emirates News Agency, WAM