QUAKE'S SHOCKS TOUCH REGION.(CAPITAL REGION)

Byline: LEIGH HORNBECK Staff writer

Albany Abbas Sanobari was a college student in Tehran, Iran, 25 years ago when he first felt an earthquake, a tremor so slight he thought it was his friend rocking the library table at which they were studying.

Sanobari said his native Iran is loaded with seismic activity. Earthquakes are common, many of them small like the one he experienced. But when Sanobari, a civil engineer in Albany, saw news Friday of a 6.6-magnitude earthquake in Bam, he and his wife quickly called home to check on relatives.

The couple's families live in Esfhahan and Qom in northern Iran, more than 600 miles from the epicenter of the …