IRIN
IRAN: Hundreds feared dead in quake
22 February 2005


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

ANKARA, 22 February (IRIN) - Hundreds of people have been reported dead 
and up to 1,000 injured after a powerful earthquake struck the southeast 
Iranian province of Kerman on Tuesday.

"There were no standing buildings, no structures that would give any 
shelter to any people - survivors of this earthquake," Kari Egge, a 
representative of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Iran, 
told IRIN following her visit to Douhan, a village she described as the 
quake's epicentre.

"There were lots of relief workers digging in the rubble trying to find 
people who were injured or dead. They brought out corpses while we were 
there," she said.

"[As for] the numbers of casualties, the rumours say 400. Of course this 
can go up or down," Egge said, warning that the figure could rise as 
some villages further up the mountains remained inaccessible.

With bad weather hampering relief operations in the affected areas, a 
full assessment of the quake's full damage remained unclear as of 
Tuesday afternoon.

"The initial assessment is that 13 villages were affected," Thomas 
McDermott, UNICEF regional director for the Middle East and North 
Africa, told IRIN from Kerman, noting that as many as 80,000 people may 
have been affected.

Their comments came after a quake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale hit 
the province early on Tuesday morning. The epicentre was close to Zarand 
city, 70 km east of Kerman, the provincial capital, and approximately 
700 miles southeast of the capital, Tehran, with the village of Douhan 
being the worst affected.

According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS), between 40 to 100 
percent of residential homes in the area had been damaged, with 20 homes 
completely destroyed. "The disaster killed 270 people, and injured at 
least 1,000 in Zarand city and outlying areas," IRCS said in a statement 
on Tuesday.

Fourteen months ago a devastating earthquake, measuring 6.7 on the 
Richter scale, levelled the historic city of Bam in the same province, 
killing over 30,000 people and injuring thousands more.

But some media reports suggest that the depth of Tuesday's quake in 
Zarand was much deeper inside the earth crust than that which hit Bam, 
resulting in less damage.

"The Bam [earthquake] was unusually big, whereas this seems to be a bit 
more manageable," Roy Probert, a spokesman for the International 
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), told IRIN 
from Geneva. "We know that in some of the cities and the towns, bigger 
urban areas, the damage was not that great, but in some of the villages 
it was quite bad," Probert added.

Due to its geographical position, Iran is prone to earthquakes and 
experiences hundreds of small tremors each year. Despite that, building 
codes, particularly in rural areas, have yet to take account of such 
risks.


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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 
2005

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