Saturday earthquakes in Iran kill 250, destroy towns

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Res­i­dents of the zone in north­west­ern Iran hit by pow­er­ful twin earth­quakes described moments of ter­ror and panic with birds crow­ing loudly in warn­ing sec­onds before the ground shook. As the death toll rose Sun­day to more than 250 with entire vil­lages lev­eled, res­cuers called off searches for sur­vivors and turned their atten­tion to car­ing for the 16,000 peo­ple left homeless.

At least 20 vil­lages were totally destroyed in the quakes on Sat­ur­day that were fol­lowed by some 36 after­shocks, state tele­vi­sion reported. Ahmad Reza Sha­jiei, a senior gov­ern­ment offi­cial in charge of res­cue oper­a­tions, said more than 5,000 tents have been set up to shel­ter the thou­sands of dis­placed who spent the night outdoors.

“The moment the earth­quake hit, it was like a snake bit­ing from under­ground. It was the worst expe­ri­ence of my life,” said res­i­dent Morteza Javid, 47, from Ahar.

“The walls were shak­ing and mov­ing from side to side. It took about a minute before I could run out of the house,” he said. “Sec­onds before the earth­quake, crows were mak­ing a lot of noise, but I didn’t under­stand why. It was only after the quake that I learned the crows were warn­ing us.” Javid said he drove more than a dozen injured peo­ple to hos­pi­tals dur­ing the night.

State tele­vi­sion said at least 250 died. The semi­of­fi­cial Mehr news agency quoted a local offi­cial who put the toll at 277. State TV said 44,000 food pack­ages and thou­sands of blan­kets have been dis­trib­uted in the stricken area.

In Wash­ing­ton, the White House press sec­re­tary sent a mes­sage of sym­pa­thy for the victims.

“Our thoughts are with the fam­i­lies of those who were lost, and we wish the wounded a speedy recov­ery,” it said.” We stand ready to offer assis­tance in this dif­fi­cult time.”

The U.S. and Iran are locked in a bit­ter fight over Tehran’s dis­puted nuclear pro­gram, which the West sus­pect is aimed at pro­duc­ing weapons. Iran denies the allegation.

The U.N. also issued a mes­sage of sym­pa­thy and offered aid.

The U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey reported that Saturday’s first quake was mag­ni­tude 6.4 and struck 60 kilo­me­ters (35 miles) north­east of the city of Tabriz at a depth of 9.9 kilo­me­ters (6.2 miles). State TV quoted local Cri­sis Com­mit­tee chief Khalil Saei as say­ing the epi­cen­ter was a region between the towns of Ahar and Haris, about 600 kilo­me­ters (350 miles) north­west of the cap­i­tal Tehran.

The sec­ond quake was a mag­ni­tude 6.3 and struck 11 min­utes later, the USGS reported. Its epi­cen­ter was 50 kilo­me­ters (30 miles) north­east of Tabriz at a depth of 9.8 kilo­me­ters (6.1 miles).

The quakes hit the towns of Ahar, Haris and Varza­qan in East Azer­bai­jan province, state tele­vi­sion reported. In addi­tion to 20 vil­lages destroyed, more than 130 oth­ers sus­tained heavy dam­age, state TV said.

The after­shocks were felt in a wide region near the Caspian Sea, caus­ing panic among the people.

Iran is located on seis­mic fault lines and is prone to earth­quakes. It expe­ri­ences at least one earth­quake every day on aver­age, although most are so small they go unno­ticed. In 2003, some 26,000 peo­ple were killed by a mag­ni­tude 6.6 quake that flat­tened the his­toric south­east­ern city of Bam.

Tele­vi­sion showed images of peo­ple being evac­u­ated on stretch­ers, while oth­ers were treated for bro­ken limbs and con­cus­sions. Dozens of fam­i­lies were sleep­ing on blan­kets laid out on the ground in parks. Some were cry­ing, and oth­ers shiv­ered from the cold in the moun­tain­ous region hit by the quake, near the bor­der with Azerbaijan.

More than 1,100 res­cuers worked through the night to pull out those trapped under rub­ble and to reach some of the more remote vil­lages affected. Some 15 dogs were brought in to search for survivors.

By after­noon, state tele­vi­sion reported that search oper­a­tions had ceased. The government’s atten­tion shifted to pro­vid­ing shel­ter to the home­less and remov­ing debris from the build­ings destroyed.

Offi­cials said the search was ended rel­a­tively quickly because the remote area is sparsely populated.

Naimeh Alapour said she ran out of her house with­out the manda­tory Islamic head­scarf when she felt the earth­quake. Alapour, 35, lives in Tabriz, the provin­cial cap­i­tal, about 50 kilo­me­ters (30 miles) from the epi­cen­ter of the earthquake.

“I sim­ply took my kid and ran down the steps. The ele­va­tor was out of ser­vice. I don’t know how I walked nine floors down. It felt like this was the end of the world,” she said.

Offi­cials have announced two days of mourn­ing in East Azer­bai­jan province.

Inte­rior Min­is­ter Mostafa Moham­mad Naj­jar said the gov­ern­ment will allo­cate funds to rebuild the houses destroyed in the quake, aim­ing to com­plete the con­struc­tion before the arrival of cold win­ter temperatures.

Naj­jar said the plans aim to con­struct build­ings resis­tant to earth­quake. Most of houses in rural areas are built of mud, and they can crum­ble when even a mod­er­ate quake hits.

Accord­ing to Naj­jar, sev­eral for­eign coun­tries have offered assis­tance, but he said Iran doesn’t need out­side help and can man­age the sit­u­a­tion. He did not name the countries.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Aug 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.