Documentation of Ferdows reconstruction after the 1968 earthquake

Iran is a vulnerable country to natural disasters which has experienced different disasters during the time. Lack of reliable information and documentation of post-reconstruction experiences is mentioned as one of the main weaknesses of the reconstruction programs in Iran. For instance, after the Ferdows destroying earthquake in 1968, any documentation has not yet been presented in reconstruction. It is obvious that the documentation of previous reconstructions programs and surveying them can be useful and prevent similar mistakes. But, it should be declared that most of this information or evidences which can be used for the similar future programs are not gathered and also not available.
In late August and early September 1968, an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale struck Ferdows town. Subsequently, survivors were divided into two groups in order to reconstruct the city. One group led by one of the religious leaders started reconstructing in the area-currently named Islamiyeh town a few kilometers above Ferdows. The government reconstructed the east of the old town for the other group who stayed in Ferdow. However, some of them didn’t utilize the governmental buildings and started to construct their own houses in Ferdows. Presently, according to the author’s research, life exists among both Islamiyeh and Ferdows towns after 48 years of construction. In the current research, it has been tried to accomplish the procedure of the reconstruction, carried out by both the government and native people based on the recognition of the reconstruction process and the final outcome in macro level (i.e. City) and micro level (i.e. Housing).

The research is an analytical documentation of the qualitative methodology that qualitative analysis completes it. The main methods of data collection in this thesis are observation and its documentation, depth interviews with at least 65 years old people and documentation review. These sets of data are collected from written and non-written sources, like newspapers, journals, books, articles, and interviews. After this step, the data are categorized and analyzed with methods that applied in qualitative methodology.
Ultimately, according to the research, it could be concluded that both of governmental and native reconstruction after 48 years is sustainable. It means people and authorities knew how to accomplish reconstruction. But in governmental reconstruction, the major consideration pertains to promoting the quality of buildings and retrofitting. On the other hand, the native reconstruction paid special attention to indigenous cultures and customs. I.e. in governmental quarters of Ferdows, it has been given excessive consideration to improve the strength of structures and performance of the town and building. Consequently, lead to neglect indigenous cultures, customs and the needs of the survivors in designing the town and structures.
In the native built regions in Ferdows and Islamiyeh, It has been paid special heed to the house and urban development in accordance with cultural, social and economic needs of the people. Therefore the lack of knowledge in anticipating the development of the town in the future, urban facilities, and reinforcement of buildings resulted in neglecting urbanization and architectural aspects in reconstruction.