Geological Team Seeking Source of Egyptian Quake

A geological team headed into the desert Tuesday to search for the source of the disastrous earthquake that struck here, raising fears that an inactive fault could have lurched into life near the Mideast’s largest city and the ancient monuments of the pharaohs.

Three aftershocks of up to 4.1 magnitude shook the city in the wake of Monday’s 5.9 temblor, which left more than 400 dead and at least 3,369 injured.

Scientists said that while the likelihood of a major new quake is minimal, the possibility of a newly active fault line as close as 20 miles south of Egypt’s populous capital could raise alarms.

“This was an original earthquake, not resulting from any known fault, and of course we now have concerns about the whole structure of the region,” said Sobhi Hassan, vice president of the National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics. “If this is the case, this has to be taken very seriously. We are not going to stop what is going to happen, but at least we must try to lessen the losses.”

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak returned to Cairo from an Asia trip and immediately closeted himself with his Cabinet before a scheduled tour of the worst-hit areas of the capital. Officials now estimate that at least 536 buildings collapsed or were damaged. Scores of mud-brick buildings in villages outside the city were also destroyed.

Egyptian Red Crescent officials put the number of dead and missing at 1,000, estimating that 10,000 were injured; only 400 of them are still hospitalized.

While aid pledges and relief teams poured in from around the world, government officials and aid workers Tuesday began to come to terms with this city’s tragic lack of quake preparedness.

The experts’ worst-case scenario, of course, had already played out: ambulances and rescue workers stuck in traffic jams of panicked motorists; buildings that collapsed because they violated the city’s minimal codes; teachers who fled their classrooms, leaving their students to die.

“Life is sweet, of course, but not at the expense of others,” said an official who could not get to the scene of a 14-story building’s collapse in suburban Heliopolis because motorists refused to let rescue vehicles pass.

“Even the ambulances they would not allow to move,” the official said. “I saw the whole thing, and I was unable to do anything, because each one was trying to save himself. It seems that, in these cases, we must be brave enough to criticize ourselves--otherwise we can never recover.”

The collapsed building, a 13-year-old structure apparently built more than twice as high as the six stories allowed in its permit, pointed up the inadequacy of Cairo’s building codes; like those of many other cities around the world, the rules contain no provisions for quake safety. But then, many of Cairo’s buildings don’t meet even existing codes, officials concede.

Ragaa Hafez Helmy, chief civil engineering professor at the American University of Cairo, estimated that 30% of the buildings in the city of 12 million are susceptible to serious damage.

In many cases, buildings in the teeming, older sections of town predate modern standards; in others, owners have built illegally, in excess of what is permitted by law. Helmy said that while most builders take care to build sufficiently strong foundations, even in buildings taller than they’re supposed to be, some do not.

“When this kind of thing happens, it may not be simply because the owner is wicked enough to do something simply disregarding life but because the owner realizes the bureaucracy and the difficulties that are put before those who are seeking a license are very time consuming,” Helmy said.

Authorities at the Heliopolis building collapse--perhaps the most serious damage inflicted by Monday’s quake--said there were early indications that the structure’s concrete contained too much sand, preventing the mix from bonding properly to internal steel supports.

A French search-and-rescue team with trained dogs joined the hunt on Tuesday. At least three more bodies were pulled from the rubble of a building that housed a restaurant, a laundry, three travel offices and 41 apartments, only 25 of them occupied.

At a hospital across the street, a woman who miraculously survived the collapse lay badly bruised but otherwise unharmed.

Samia Ragab Khalil, 36, said she was standing in her kitchen when the building began to shake. She turned and ran to look for her young son. As the room began to collapse around her, she ran into the dining room. “The next thing I remember was hearing voices far away saying, ‘Is there anyone there? Is there anyone there?’ ” she said. “I tried to answer, but my voice was very weak.”

Khalil had been protected under a large concrete slab, but her son was not. “He is dead,” she said, beginning to cry.

Unofficial estimates of more than 100 children killed in the quake raised concerns about quake preparations at schools, many so crowded they operate two shifts daily. There was substantial damage to at least four schools, but most children appeared to be hurt when trampled while racing toward the exits.

Hayam Bassiuni, 7, rested in a Heliopolis hospital bed, her leg bandaged and her arms, legs and face covered with bruises. “When the earthquake happened, the teachers told us to ‘Get out, get out!’ ” she recalled. “They said there’s an earthquake, the school will fall down. We ran out. I fell down, and the other girls stepped on my body. So I got injured, and some others, also. . . .”

Where was her teacher? “My teacher was the first one out of the room,” she said.

At the Giza plateau on the western edge of the city, inspectors said there was no damage to the Pyramids and the Sphinx, whose crumbling in recent years has been blamed on everything from road vibrations to rising water tables.

But the Egyptian Antiquities Organization said 40 Islamic monuments were damaged by the quake, six of them seriously enough to require immediate care.

Meantime, experts remained perplexed about the source of the quake, which fell outside the normally active fault zones along the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. The quake, centered about 20 miles southwest of Cairo, was not on any mapped active fault line, scientist Hassan said.

But other seismic experts said there are a number of old and inactive fault lines deep underneath the desert around Cairo. “What is not known is how potentially active those faults are,” said David Simpson, a U.S.-based seismic expert.

The U.S. Geological Survey said historic records reveal that a magnitude 6.8 earthquake, centered 50 miles southwest of Cairo, occurred in 1847. The epicenter of Monday’s temblor was not far away, 20 miles southwest of the Egyptian capital.

Times staff writer Kenneth Reich in Los Angeles contributed to this report.