7.1 QUAKE LEVELS IRANIAN VILLAGES; THOUSANDS KILLED; PLEA FOR AID ISSUED.
Byline: Afshin Valinejad Associated Press
A powerful earthquake devastated dev·as·tate
tr.v. dev·as·tat·ed, dev·as·tat·ing, dev·as·tates
1. To lay waste; destroy.
2. To overwhelm; confound; stun: was devastated by the rude remark. 200 villages in the remote mountains of northeastern Iran on Saturday, killing at least 2,000 and injuring 5,000. Survivors frantically pulled victims from collapsed buildings and rushed them to makeshift emergency centers.
Iran appealed for international aid for the stricken villages and towns, many of them cut off by landslides triggered by the quake. Iranian volunteers hurried to the region to help dig out the dead and injured, state-run radio said.
Iranian authorities early Sunday said the death toll had increased to at least 2,000, according to according to
prep.
1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.
2. In keeping with: according to instructions.
3. state-run Tehran radio. The figure was nearly double the 1,100 reported Saturday.
People slept in Qaen's streets Saturday night, shivering shivering /shiv·er·ing/ (shiv´er-ing)
1. involuntary shaking of the body, as with cold.
2. a disease of horses, with trembling or quivering of various muscles.
shivering
see shiver, stringhalt. in the 41-degree air but too scared to go indoors, fearing that further quakes would strike the region. Ten thousand homes collapsed in Qaen, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said.
The earthquake struck at 12:28 p.m. local time with a moment magnitude of 7.1, according to the U.S. Geological Survey The term geological survey can be used to describe both the conduct of a survey for geological purposes and an institution holding geological information.
A geological survey in Golden, Colo. It was centered 65 miles north-northeast of Birjand, near Qaen, about 70 miles west of the Afghan border.
Most of the damage occurred in the 60-mile stretch between Birjand and Qaen, a region dotted by poor villages and mud huts. The Iranian news agency said there was considerable damage in Afghanistan but gave no other details.
``I was outside when I heard the mountain roar like a dragon, and suddenly the air became dark as night from the thick cloud of dust,'' one survivor, Gholamreza Nowrouz-Zadeh, said.
More than 100 children, including all six of his grandchildren GRANDCHILDREN, domestic relations. The children of one's children. Sometimes these may claim bequests given in a will to children, though in general they can make no such claim. 6 Co. 16. , were killed when the schoolhouse collapsed in his village of Ardakul, about 60 miles east of Qaen, he said, crying.
``Three of them were pulled out dead, but three others are still buried under the rubble,'' Nowrouz-Zadeh said.
Nowrouz-Zadeh was one of about 300 injured people, many bleeding profusely pro·fuse
adj.
1. Plentiful; copious.
2. Giving or given freely and abundantly; extravagant: were profuse in their compliments. , who were sent to a makeshift care center at Shahid Shahid or Shaheed is a male given name common among Muslims. It is the Arabic word for witness or martyr. People with this name
Famous people with this name include: See also
- Shaheed (disambiguation page)
- All pages beginning with Shaheed
Aminzadeh stadium.
He lay on the floor with a blood-soaked bandage bandage /ban·dage/ (ban´daj)
1. a strip or roll of gauze or other material for wrapping or binding a body part.
2. to cover by wrapping with such material. around his head. Nearby, dozens of intravenous sacks hung from donated coat racks.
Dr. Mohammad Hossein Mozaffar said more physicians were urgently needed.
``I can't deal with this alone,'' he said as he put a cast on the leg of a wailing 5-year-old boy clinging to his mother.
``I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed)
"Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. how many casts I have done today, but it seems like hundreds,'' Mozaffar said, pointing to piles of empty boxes of casting chalk around him.
President Hashemi Rafsanjani, on a visit to Tajikistan, sent his condolences to quake victims and their families, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Aftershocks continued Saturday, hampering relief efforts, the Iranian news agency reported.
Interior Minister Ali Mohammad Besharati asked for international aid, saying Iran was ``ready to receive assistance from our God-seeking compatriots and from those countries that would like to assist the earthquake victims,'' Tehran television reported.
The radio broadcast a desperate appeal for surgical teams, medical supplies, tents, food, water tankers and ambulances. It said water and power lines to the stricken villages had been severed.
Tehran radio said some 200 villages were either destroyed or severely damaged, and 400 relief teams had been dispatched to the area, home to about 40,000 people.
Most of the villagers in the region are subsistence farmers who either tend camels or sheep or grow wheat and saffron saffron, name for a fall-flowering plant (Crocus sativus) of the family Iridaceae (iris family) and also for a dye obtained therefrom. The plant is native to Asia Minor, where for centuries it has been cultivated for its aromatic orange-yellow stigmas (see . Many of the injured looked weak and malnourished mal·nour·ished
adj.
Affected by improper nutrition or an insufficient diet. .
Mashhad, the capital of Khorasan province and 75 miles north of Qaen, is the nearest place equipped to deal with large numbers of injured - but it is a five-hour drive over rough terrain.
Some of the villages are more than 90 miles from a hospital, an official in the governor's office in Birjand told The Associated Press. He identified himself only by his last name, Maleki.
``We have pulled out scores of people from under the rubble, and relief operations are still going on,'' he said. ``Some were pulled out dead, and some died on the way to the hospital. But we still cannot say how many have died.''
State-run Tehran radio said early Sunday that the quake killed at least 2,000 people and injured about 5,000. The station had reported 40,000 people were injured, but Nasser Arbabi, an official at the station, later said the figure was incorrect.
Eight hundred people were killed in Qaen, 200 in Darmian, a city 45 miles east, and at least 130 in Birjand, the news agency reported. Qaen is some 310 miles east of the capital, Tehran.
Because many of the narrow dirt roads to the area were cut off by landslides or had collapsed in the quake, helicopters ferried tents, food and fuel to villages from Mashhad.
The earthquake also was felt in the neighboring neigh·bor
n.
1. One who lives near or next to another.
2. A person, place, or thing adjacent to or located near another.
3. A fellow human.
4. Used as a form of familiar address.
v. provinces of Sistan-Baluchestan, Kerman and Semnan, Tehran radio said.
It was the strongest earthquake to strike Iran since two powerful temblors hit northwestern Gilan and Zanjan provinces on June 21, 1990. About 50,000 people were killed and 60,000 injured in the quakes, which had magnitudes of 7.3 and 7.7.
The last major quake to hit Khorasan struck on Sept. 16, 1978, killing 25,000 people. That temblor, one of the most powerful to hit Iran, measured 7.7.
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Map: Earthquake, 7.1 magnitude
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Topic: 7.1 QUAKE LEVELS IRANIAN VILLAGES; THOUSANDS KILLED; PLEA FOR AID ISSUED.
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