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Iran's Battered Earthquake Victims Ask for Help

 
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Spenta



Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Posts: 1829

PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2003 3:49 pm    Post subject: Iran's Battered Earthquake Victims Ask for Help Reply with quote

Iran's Battered Quake Victims Call for More Help

Dec. 26 — By Parisa Hafezi

BAM, Iran (Reuters) - Iranian taxi driver Tahmasb Yousefabadi lost 17 family members when an earthquake razed much of this ancient Iranian city and buried thousands of people.

Streets were packed with frightened survivors, huddling under blankets and hoping that relief supplies would come soon.

"No-one has come to help us, all we are after is a tent. I feel I could die tonight it's so cold," said Yousefabadi, 25.

The quake struck at 5:28 a.m., burying sleeping residents under their mud-brick homes. It ripped down about 70 percent of the buildings in the city and killed more than 15,000.

As night fell and temperatures headed below zero, people lit fires to keep warm and made torches from palm branches for light as they dug with bare hands for survivors.

Bam was without water, gas or electricity.

Bawling infants and dazed adults who escaped the collapse of their homes gathered in city squares, cowering from the piercing cold under woolen blankets.

The dead were piled onto the back seats of cars or heaved into trucks. Brick and rubble-strewn pavements were peppered with the prostrate injured, some on intravenous drips.

Workers dug trenches that were hastily filled with corpses.

Ruhollah Bahrami, a shopkeeper, also felt let down by the authorities.

"If this were the West, we would have had plenty of help by now," he said.

Roads into Bam were choked with ambulances and cars packed with people desperate to find out whether their relatives were alive.

Residents handed out biscuits to the motorists and petrol to ambulances.

President Mohammad Khatami acknowledged the Islamic Republic was stretched and Iran appealed for international aid.

The government said it had sent 19 aircraft to ferry survivors to hospitals and it was using helicopters to lift out some of the injured.

Television showed dirty and dazed survivors packed into one commercial airliner. Many were bloodied and some were wrapped in sheets.

Several nations were sending teams of doctors and rescuers with sniffer dogs and special equipment to locate survivors buried beneath rubble.

But Maryam, 17, accepted the ambulances would come too late.

"I have lost all my family. My parents, my grandmother and two sisters are under the rubble," she said.

Maliheh, 50, said she had lost her three children and was desperate for a mobile phone to contact family and friends.

Old women beat their heads and smeared their faces with dirt before the corpses of their relations laid out in rows, and state television showed people wailing as their severely injured relatives were taken to Tehran for treatment.

Reuters eyewitnesses said few aid workers were at the scene and the hospitals that were still operating were filled to overflowing. The injured were being taken to neighboring towns.
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Spenta



Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Posts: 1829

PostPosted: Fri Dec 26, 2003 4:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Quote:
A representative of the Central Hospital Complex in Kermala announced that the number of the victims of the earthquake in Bam might reach 30,000. More than the half of the citizens of Bam are still under the ruins and the life – saving teams cannot deal with the situation. The first plane with 150 injured people arrived in Teheran.


http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?catid=138&ch=0&newsid=25358&PHPSESSID=
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Spenta



Joined: 04 Sep 2003
Posts: 1829

PostPosted: Sat Dec 27, 2003 6:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Red Cross has setup a funds collection for Iran:

Quote:

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) appealed for almost 10 million euros (12 million dollars) to provide aid to some 200,000 people over a six-month period.


Please give whatever you can. Call them at:

Red Cross #
Call 1-800-helpnow

Also Mercycorps is accepting donations for Bam victims, you can donate online (SSL secure server), phone or mail:

Doantions Page:
https://ssl.charityweb.net/mercycorps/index.html?Custom15=wm

Via Phone:
To donate by telephone, please call 0131.477.3677 (inside the UK) or 800.292.3355 extension 250 (anywhere else).
Mail:

Mercy Corps
Iran Earthquake
Dept. W
PO Box 2669
Portland, OR 97208-2669
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