Iran 'Nothing But Devastation and Debris'

Damn...

May God bless their souls. And the Devil should have the souls of the mullahs.

Oh freedom, those pictures are painful to see. My heart just breaks for those parents.

No father should have to bury his son.

May God bless the families and the victims of this tragedy.

ping

Had it been possible for Israeli rescuers to get there in time, I doubt this father would have objected to their aid -- or their politics -- or their religion.

How sad, this man's tragedy multiplied by at least 20,000.

Rescue Teams Seek Iran Quake Survivors

35 minutes ago

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer

BAM, Iran - Hopes of finding more earthquake survivors in Iran's ancient city of Bam faded Sunday as the sharp, foul smell of death permeated the pulverized rubble where mud-brick houses became instant tombs for more than 20,000 people.

Rescue workers from around the world joined Iranians in searching through powdery debris that left little room for air pockets, which could allow people to survive while awaiting help.

More than 20,000 bodies, including one American killed while visiting the city's 2,000-year-old citadel, have been retrieved since Friday's 6.6-magnitude earthquake shook the city and surrounding region in southeast Iran, a local government spokesman said.

Another 10,000 people were hospitalized, the spokesman Asadollah Iranmanesh said. Other officials have expressed fears that the death toll could rise as high as 40,000.

Only one man was pulled alive from the rubble Sunday, Iranmanesh said. A day earlier, officials reported freeing 150 survivors.

"We have not lost hope for survivors, and our priority remains to find them," Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi Lari said.

Later, he told reporters that the search for survivors would probably end Monday night: "Tomorrow is the last hope."

Experts say that 72 hours is generally the longest people can survive if they are trapped in rubble. Sunrise Monday is Bam's 72-hour mark.

Planes from dozens of countries landed in the provincial capital of Kerman with relief supplies, volunteers and dogs trained to find bodies and survivors. U.S. military C-130 cargo planes were among them, despite long-severed diplomatic relations and President Bush (news - web sites)'s characterization of Iran as being part of an "axis of evil" with Iraq (news - web sites) and North Korea (news - web sites).

Interior Minister Lari said Iran accepted U.S. government help and not Israeli help because Tehran considers the United States a legitimate government, but opposes Israel for its actions against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (news - web sites). Israel "is a force of occupation," he said.

As for Americans, Lari said. "I believe it is possible that they have a humanitarian sensibility in such a dramatic situation."

Traffic clogged the roads leading in and out of Bam, 630 miles southeast of Tehran, the Iranian capital.

Survivors with any kind of motor vehicle loaded furniture and whatever they could salvage and headed for other cities. Incoming traffic brought relief supplies, volunteers and relatives desperate for news of their kin.

Mostafa Biderani and his wife, Zahra Nazari, wept in front of a destroyed police station in the center of Bam, slapping their faces and beating their chests in an Islamic expression of grief.

"I pulled my son out of the rubble this morning," said Biderani, who drove from Isfahan, 470 miles to the northwest. "But all my hopes were dashed when I saw the police station had collapsed. I pulled out my son with my bare hands."

The traditional sun-dried, mud-brick construction of the houses doomed many occupants, as it has for centuries in quake-prone Iran. Heavy roofs, often sealed with cement or plaster to keep out rain, sit atop mud-brick walls that have no support beams. When walls crumble, roofs smash down, leaving few air pockets and crushing or suffocating anyone inside. Friday's quake struck about 5:30 a.m. when most people were sleeping.

"In these conditions, we are not optimistic of finding anyone alive. Hopes are dwindling fast," said Barry Sessions of Britain's Rapid-UK rescue group, which did not find any survivors in 24 hours of searching.

"The earthquake reduced most of the buildings to something like talcum powder. Many of the casualties suffocated and there are few voids or gaps left in the buildings where we would normally find survivors."

His thoughts were echoed by other relief workers.

Luca Spoletini, spokesman for the Italian Civil Protection, said its teams found nothing but corpses after a day spent probing the rubble.

Describing a visit to Barazat, a town with a population of 20,000 a few miles outside Bam, Spoletini said, "There is nothing any more. Not one single house, not one single building stands upright. It is like the Apocalypse. I have never seen anything like that."

By Saturday night, enough tents had arrived to accommodate the thousands of homeless. There was even a bit of normalcy, with people complaining they had to share a tent with another family.

Looters were also out, grabbing food from warehouses and grocery shops. Police tried to control them by shooting in the air.

In addition to Italian and British teams, rescuers, supplies or pledges of aid arrived from Austria, Azerbaijan, Britain, Finland, Germany, Russia, Turkey and dozens of other nations.

The United States arranged an airlift of 150,000 pounds of food, water and medical supplies. Four military planes flew into the country from Kuwait.

"The reception was beyond expectations," said U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Jeff Bohn, who was on the first plane. "The warmth that the Iranian military and civil aviation workers gave us was truly incredible."

An Iranian navy helicopter crashed 30 miles southwest of Bam on Sunday after delivering tents and blankets, the regional governor's office said. All three crewmen were killed, he said.

Bam was best known for its medieval citadel, considered the world's largest surviving mud fortress. Most of the fortress, including a massive square tower, crumbled like a sand castle when the quake hit.

_____

Associated Press reporter Alessandra Rizzo in Bam contributed to this report.

Iran Says Quake Death Toll Could Reach 30,000

1 hour, 9 minutes ago

By Parisa Hafezi

BAM, Iran (Reuters) - Rescuers said Monday is probably the last hope of finding more survivors from Iran's devastating earthquake as officials warned the death toll could reach 30,000 and that disease is now a threat.

The stench of death filled the flattened ancient Silk Road city of Bam as the world united in relief efforts and U.S. airmen worked alongside soldiers from the Islamic Republic that President Bush (news - web sites) once branded an "axis of evil" state.

As searches went into a fourth day, rescuers said they were no longer finding survivors -- only the mangled remains of people killed when the world's most lethal earthquake in at least 10 years leveled much of Bam.

"(Rescue operations) will continue at least for one more day (until midnight on Monday) when an assessment will be made to continue or not," Alain Pasche, a representative of a U.N. rescue coordination team, told Reuters.

Round-the-clock relief efforts were complicated by piles of bodies in the streets, overflowing cemeteries, bitterly cold nights, rain, aftershocks, confusion, some looting and the crash of an army helicopter that left the two people on board missing.

"I believe the (death) toll will reach 30,000," said a government official in Kerman province, where the quake struck before dawn on Friday while most people were still sleeping and destroyed about 70 percent of Bam's mostly mud-brick buildings.

DISEASE WARNING

Interior Minister Abdolvahed Mousavi-Lari said some 20,000 bodies had been recovered, but the death toll was likely to be much higher.

Warning disease was a threat, he said: "We have instructed various bodies to immediately start cleaning up. If we don't bring hygiene back to the city we will have major problems."

Some 30,000 people were injured in the quake, which measured 6.3 on the Richter scale.

Aid workers estimated more than 100,000 people might have been left homeless in the Bam area, some 1,000 km (600 miles) southeast of the capital Tehran.

Aid poured in from around the world to help deal with a disaster that President Mohammad Khatami (news - web sites) said his oil-producing country could not cope with on its own.

Some young men armed with pistols and Kalashnikov assault rifles drove into Bam in vans and stole Red Crescent tents. Others on motorbikes chased aid trucks, picking up blankets thrown out by soldiers.

As cemeteries battled to cope, mullahs in shirt-sleeves rather than their usual robes and wearing face masks against the dust and smell tore sheeting to shroud corpses.

There was no time to wash the bodies according to Islamic rituals.

Bodies were brought in blankets, sprayed with disinfectant to guard against disease and tipped into trenches hollowed out by mechanical diggers.

Although some survivors have been accommodated in tents, others spent a third night in the open in temperatures of 7 degrees Celsius, burning cardboard and any other material they could find to fend off the cold.

Fatima Momen Abadi, 30, wandered among those huddling round fires to keep warm. She was unable to sleep after losing her sister and three daughters in the quake.

"NO HOPE"

"I have no hope," she said, her voice cracking with emotion.

Bam's small airport was packed with a dozen or so military and civilian cargo planes delivering aid in the early hours, barely able to find space on the tarmac that handled no more than a handful of planes each week before Friday's quake.

The airport's arrival hall has been converted into a temporary hospital ward.

A U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules landed in Kerman, near Bam, with a first delivery of American aid and the U.S. military said it would ship in about 70 tons of supplies originally earmarked for reconstruction in Iraq (news - web sites).

U.S. officials said American airmen and Iranian soldiers worked together to unload the plane, the first American flight into Iran since the Iranian hostage crisis ended in 1981.

Washington broke ties with Iran after the U.S. embassy was stormed in 1979 and 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.

Iran's call to the world for help from anywhere but Israel contrasted with its rejection of assistance in 1990 when a quake killed 36,000 people.

Until Friday, the biggest earthquake death toll in the past decade was in India, where 19,700 people died in January 2001.

Bam, a tourist attraction because of an ancient citadel and other centuries-old buildings, has a history going back to the old Silk Road days when it was a stopover for merchants and travelers between China and Europe.

A large part of the citadel was destroyed by the quake.

Before 1979 US/Israel helped equip Iran with the 3rd strongest military in the world.

Iran aided Israel during 1973 Arab-Israeli conflict with money, and gas/oil for planes. Iran was regarded as a strong Israeli ally.

This is so sad. The mullahs care nothing for their people. They would rather build nuclear weapons and threaten their neighbors than use their vast oil wealth to rebuild these ancient cities. This has happened several times in Iran and nothing is obviously being done. I pray for all these innocent people.

I smell a political shakeup coming in Iran that will make this earthquake seem small.

I smell a political shakeup coming in Iran that will make this earthquake seem small.

I hope you are right. This is the biggest loss of life they have ever had in an earthquake.

I went On and On to my lib friend the other night about this...How we respond and step up to the plate will shape world perception where it matters...

Yada yada yada...I know...we piss billions down a slew of ratholes each year...yada yada yada...

What we do here and how we are perceived Will Matter...step up...or step out...

Ping

This calamity is obviously sad, but if the situation were reversed, would Iran be sending aid to America?
SAy L.A. were devestated by its coming big one with many dead, would Iran put aside its animosity and send any aid? I very much doubt it.

I'm sure that if we broadcast a world wide appeal (as Iran did) for help, Iran would respond.

Are you saying we shouldn't offer aid to the Iranians because they might not respond in kind?

Thanks for the ping, I was about to send some picture to my thread there.
Thanks to Fr44, it is not necessary any more.
Iran heard your message.

Have no doubt about it...
As Iranian people have relatives in southern California, they sent many things as aid to the American-Iranians.
I can remember one obviously a few years ago.

Nope, I am reluctant to offer aid because after their abduction and holding of Americans during Jimmy Carters disasterous presidency they are still the enemy.
Because of their support for terrorism, the Iranian support for the thugs in Iraq who are currently killing American troops, because of the oppression of the Iranian people by their own govt. These are a few of the reasons I wouldn't give them a red American cent.