(Ask Your ) Questions regarding the disaster in Iran

30 Dec 2003

[Khashayar]

I am an Iranian Freeper, Would like to answer your questions on Iran.

[DoctorZIn]

Your welcome.

[saquin]

Rescue workers found a 7-8 year old boy alive, safe and sound under the debris.

That's great! Just what I was praying for! Even though many people said no one could still be alive after so much time, these miracles can happen. Especially with young children.

See my post #68

[cmsgop]

How Cool is that Compliment,huh ?

[Gracey]

I second your comments to DoctorZIn. He has been most diligent in keeping the Iranian situation and our awareness on a high level.

I like hearing that Iranians appreciate most Americans. The majority of people here only wish that all people of the world would be free to pursue their given human rights to life, liberty and a democratic type government.

It warms my heart that you are sharing with us from Iran.

We will rejoice when you are a FREE country, again.

[antaresequity]

Thanks Jim...

[Khashayar]

The Iranian Air Force soldiers beside the USAF C-130

Iranian Army soldiers helping American Servicement to offload the shipments.

[Pro-Bush]

Bump!

[DoctorZIn]

Awesome photos!

[Pro-Bush]

Love the "teamwork" viewed here!

..A picture speaks a thousand words

[Gracey]

#98 Cool emblem :-)

[Khashayar]

Good to know that Iranian Army trained by the US Army in 1970s and many officers are still pro-America, especially in the Air Force.

[F14 Pilot]

Thanks for sending these awesome pictures and info.

[F14 Pilot]

Iran says quake toll could reach 30,000

Mon 29 December, 2003
Reuters
By Parisa Hafezi

BAM, Iran (Reuters) - Rescuers say today is probably the last hope of finding more survivors from Iran's devastating earthquake as officials warn 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 George W. Bush 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 levelled 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 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 tonnes of supplies originally earmarked for reconstruction in Iraq.

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 travellers between China and Europe.

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

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=429703&section=news

[antaresequity]

U.S. Relief Supplies Airlifted To Iran
Rescuers, Surgeons Head to Quake Site
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 28, 2003; Page A22


A U.S. military aircraft bearing the first 15 tons of a planned 75 tons of American earthquake relief supplies for Iran lifted off from an airfield in Kuwait yesterday, as the Bush administration pledged to work with Iranian and international officials to speed the distribution of aid.

In addition to the materiel, which includes blood, food and other humanitarian supplies, the Bush administration is dispatching surgeons and disaster relief experts from the State Department, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Agency for International Development, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Also, two teams of search-and-rescue specialists from fire departments in Fairfax County and Los Angeles are en route to Iran, where they will look for any people who may still be alive under the rubble. The U.S. teams' equipment includes special cameras that can fit in tight crevices to search for survivors. The Pentagon has offered six military cargo planes to the relief effort.

A senior administration official said humanitarian supplies from the United States will be sent on a C-5 from Dover, Del., and a C-5 from March Joint Air Reserve Base in California. A C-17 will leave from Westover Joint Air Reserve Base in Massachusetts.

"The United States will continue to work with Iranian authorities and international relief organizations to help the people of Iran during this challenging time," McClellan said.

Mutual concern for victims of what may be the worst natural disaster in Iran's history has, for the moment, trumped the deep political differences between Washington and Tehran. But U.S. officials told the Associated Press yesterday that the U.S. relief effort does not imply any change in policy toward Iran, which the Bush administration has labeled a part of "the axis of evil" for its support of terrorism and alleged secret efforts to develop a nuclear weapons program.

"There is a humanitarian catastrophe in Iran, and our only mission is to alleviate the human suffering associated with yesterday's earthquake," State Department spokesman Lou Fintor said. "These efforts will not alter the tone or intensity of our dialogue with the Iranians on other matters of grave concern."


[the rest of this article is Washington COMPOST about how evil we are how terrible we are...so I canned it]

[Khashayar]

"The United States will continue to work with Iranian authorities and international relief organizations to help the people of Iran during this challenging time," McClellan said.

That is why we are thankful to you all.

[antaresequity]

help the people of Iran

Its all about you...and your people...not stupid politics...never forget it...We will stand beside you...I will stand beside you...

[AdmSmith]

Any info on the aftershock at Bam today?

[Khashayar]

There are children who lost their parents, there are also parents who lost their beloved children. I think they are in grievous pain and your sympathy and help will ease their pain.

[Frances_Marion]

What can I do to help?

[cmsgop]

President Bush and The American People Love You And Want To Help.....Tell Your Citizens That....