Iranians Stunned By Magnitude Of Disaster

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31775, 4 September 1968, Page 15

Iranians Stunned By Magnitude Of Disaster

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) / TEHERAN, September 3. Iran, a nation shocked by the magnitude of the earthquake disaster that overwhelmed eastern Khorassan at the week-end, mourned its dead today while messages of sympathy and offers of help poured in from all over the world. The official death toll was given as 12,000 today, but reports from police and relief organisations maintain that it has reached 20,000. The exact figure may take days, even weeks to compile as reports trickle in from communities that are still inaccessible. About one third of the region’s 1,800,000 people are believed to have been seriously affected by the two earthquakes that devastated more than 100 towns and villages in an area of 50 square miles.

The few hospitals in the area are overflowing with the injured, the number of whom is officially put at 50,000. The vast rescue and relief operation swung into full gear today as thousands of doctors and medical students on holiday volunteered to join teams from the Red Lion and Sun (Iran’s Red Cross) organisation, the Army, and the police. The authorities flew in the necessities for field hospitals from Teheran and took measures to guard against epidemics among the 100,000 people who have been rendered homeless by the disaster and are now living in the open. Officials also had the grim task of holding brief and simple burial services at the sites of mass graves, services that were repeated in towns and villages throughout the region.

The Shah of Iran, who sent the Prime Minister (Mr Amir Abbas Hoveida) and five Cabinet Ministers to the area, is personally supervising the rescue operations from Teheran with the help of Empress

Farah. The Empress is among the thousands who have given blood to aid the victims. Members of the Cabinet, civic dignitaries and people from all walks of life, including foreign tourists, joined the queues of blood donors today. The Shah has ordered a 24hour period of official mourning throughout the nation. Flags in the capital flew at half mast, and the country's radio and television networks were silent. The Shah, who led the nation in prayer, ordered the Air Force to drop food and medical supplies to the stricken areas still inaccessible. A fleet of aircraft is now engaged in an emergency airlift from Teheran to Meshed, the provincial capital. Hundreds of doctors and nurses with medicine, blood plasma, food, tents and blankets have already been flown in. Poignant Scenes Heartbreaking scenes are reported hourly from the disaster area; of rescuers dragging out bodies from the tons of rubble and debris and placing them in mass graves for quick burial; of children clinging to mounds

of mud and bricks that had once been their homes, crying for their parents still buried beneath the debris. Fifteen hundred people were dug out alive from beneath ruined homes and buildings in the town of Kakhk alone, and are being treated for their injuries in the overcrowded local hospital. Another 1500 are unaccounted for.

Mr Hoveida reported the devastation here to the Shah, and special orders were given for the immediate construction of shock-proof homes for the survivors.

Kakhk, a town with a population of 14,363, was at the epicentre of the first violent earthquake, which registered 7.8 on the Richter scale. A

second shake, registering 6.5, struck the same region on the following morning. Further tremors thundered beneath the town of Gonabad and its surrounding area that night, bringing down the remaining walls.

The World Council of Churches has sent a special team to Iran from Geneva to assess the immediate needs of the survivors.

President de Gaulle today offered the Shah his condolences and sent a personal contribution of 100,000 francs ($NZ17,144) for the victims. Australia is to send $lO,OOO to Iran to relieve the suffering. An announcement to this effect was made late tonight by the Minister of External Affairs (Mr Paul Hasluck). In recent years areas as far apart as Alaska and Kashmir have been devastated by earthquakes, but regions around the Mediterranean and the Middle East have taken the brunt of the disasters.

Agadir, in Morocco, was hit in 1960; north-western Iran in 1962; Skopje, in Jugoslavia, in 1963: and Ankara, in 1966. The worst recorded earthquake claimed 830,000 lives in Shensi, China, in January, 1556.