IRAN: Focus on relief in aftermath of Kerman quake

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

HOUTKAN, 24 Feb 2005 (IRIN) - The earthquake that struck Iran's southeastern Kerman province early on Tuesday turned the mountain village of Houtkan into mud, killed many of its inhabitants and reduced the survivors to homelessness and destitution. The village was almost totally destroyed and, because it is so isolated, help has been slow to reach the stricken community.

On Thursday, the weather was very cold and a heavy mist hung over Houtkan, lending an already nightmarish scene a surreal and ghostly quality. The steep hillside to which the village used to cling was a mass of broken walls, bent telephone poles and twisted metal door and window frames, poking out at odd angles from the thick mud.

Some rooms were recessed into the hillside and could be seen completely intact amid the devastation, with a family's possessions left neatly as they were the night before the quake. Livestock wandered up and down the hillside and along ruined alleys seeking food. Survivors tried to lift a dead cow from the pathway.

RESCUE TURNS TO RELIEF

More than 500 people are now believed to have died in the earthquake, the Iranian government says. But it will take more time to establish the exact number of deaths as rescue workers are hampered in their search for bodies by continuing poor weather in the mountains. However, the relief operation is well under way. Tents were provided to most families in the more easily accessible areas on the first day of the earthquake and to others on the second day.

"I was making tea and then I realised everything was shaking," Fatemeh Mansouri, a middle-aged woman who lost a daughter in the disaster, told IRIN. "I managed to get my son out of the house but my young daughter was trapped inside by her legs. I knew where she was and so I lifted the rubble off her."

As Mansouri spoke, another son was erecting a tent behind her. He had travelled from Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf when he heard the news. She stood forlornly in the road pointing at the crumbled remains of her house and shouted: "God, God, God!"

The tremor measured 6.4 on the Richter scale and was quite deep, reducing the violence at the surface. However, rescue workers have said the death toll was high due to what they described as poor building techniques. After the Bam earthquake in December 2003, only 250 km southeast in the same province, experts said the more than 30,000 deaths were partly the result of the widespread use of traditional mud bricks in house construction.

POOR CONSTRUCTION LED TO HIGH DEATH TOLL

As the steel and concrete twisted and cracked, the bricks crumbled onto the inhabitants, choking them with dust and filling air pockets in which survivors might have lived for a few days. After the Kerman quake, rain made the mud heavier, crushing those inside, and reducing the flow of air into the rubble. However, two young girls were reported to have been rescued from the debris the day after the earthquake in Houtkan. Many others were only partially trapped and were rescued by frantic relatives and soldiers in the hours immediately after the quake.

[ENDS]