Early casualty estimates and medical help management after the M7.3 Kermanshah earthquake of November 12, 2017 in Iran.

Medical responses to fatal earthquakes have to be rapid to save lives. Here we report the QLARM alert that was issued less than an hour after the magnitude 7.3 Kermanshah, Iran, earthquake of 2017 and the following medical response.

Variations in earthquake-size distribution across different stress regimes.

The earthquake size distribution follows, in most instances, a power law, with the slope of this power law, the 'b value', commonly used to describe the relative occurrence of large and small events (a high b value indicates a larger proportion of small earthquakes, and vice versa). Statistically significant variations of b values have been measured in laboratory experiments, mines and various tectonic regimes such as subducting slabs, near magma chambers, along fault zones and in aftershock zones. However, it has remained uncertain whether these differences are due to differing stress regimes, as it was questionable that samples in small volumes (such as in laboratory specimens, mines and the shallow Earth's crust) are representative of earthquakes in general.