Stari Bar

The old town of Stari Bar is located on the side of the mountain, or rather, what’s still left of the old town is there. The earthquake of 1979 almost completely destroyed Stari Bar, and only about 10% had been rebuilt by the time we visited in 1989. It’s easy to see how people are killed in a quake. These old stone buildings were built without steel reinforcing bars, and most had no mortar holding the stones together. So, these old buildings just fell on the people who ran outside into the walkways and into the narrow streets of Stari Bar when the quake began. Of course, they had stood there for a thousand years or more, even though they were built without a building permit.

We have been unable to find records of people being killed in earthquakes, except when objects (buildings, trees, cliffs, boulders) fell on them. And since we live in California, we look for quake information, and maybe we “grasp at straws” in believing it!