The earthquake that struck the historic Iranian city of Bam has turned much of the city into a mass grave, writes Rasha Saad Though it only lasted 12 seconds, the earthquake which hit the Iranian town of Bam last Friday was the most devastating the world has seen in more than a decade. Of the city's 80,000 inhabitants, an estimated 50,000 people are reported dead. 25,000 have already been buried, and only about 2000 people have been rescued alive from the rubble. Now, nearly a week after the quake, the rescue effort has given way to a recovery operation, and by Monday morning any hopes of finding more survivors had faded (72 hours is generally the longest people can survive trapped under rubble.) At the crowded cemeteries, there was no time to wash the bodies according to Islamic rituals. Mullahs in shirt-sleeves, wearing face masks against the dust and smell, tore up sheeting to shroud corpses. Bodies were brought in blankets, sprayed with disinfectant to prevent disease and tipped into trenches hollowed out by mechanical diggers. Digger driver Jamshid Rashidi was staggered by the scale of the work. "I feel I am burying Bam," he told Reuters. Volunteers also dug individual graves, but the overwhelming number of bodies made it necessary to bury some victims in mass graves hollowed out by bulldozers. In the haste and confusion, mistakes were made. A clergyman from Qom described how more than once he was reciting the final prayers for unidentified men wrapped in shrouds only to discover that the men were still alive when their bodies suddenly moved. Survivors have also had to content with the freezing desert temperatures. With both water and electricity cut off, most local people are having to rely on open fires, while temperatures can fall as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius. The spread of disease also represents a great danger. According to UNICEF Iran communication officer, Hamid Marashi, "There is a serious threat of diarrhoea, dysentery and influenza in the region." Marashi also warned that the shallow and poorly prepared graves may well prove breeding grounds for epidemics. With the smell of death surrounding them, volunteer gravediggers, protected by inoculations, toiled to try to prevent disease spreading from the dead to the living. "I have received some injuries," said Vasoul, 40, as he showed his hands bloodied from hours of digging graves and carrying bodies unceremoniously into the trenches. "And I am touching the corpses." However, amidst the despair and debris, there were also some rare moments of joy and hope. A baby girl cradled in her dead mother's arms was rescued alive from the rubble of a collapsed building on Monday. And the chirping of two pet canaries from beneath the rubble of another destroyed house led two children to be saved, after the birds attracted the attention of rescue workers. Many Iranians also took comfort in the way news of the crisis was received beyond the country's borders. "The gestures of solidarity we have received from the whole world shows that humanitarian feelings overcome geographical, religious and political boundaries," Iranian political observer Sadeq Al-Husseini told Al- Ahram Weekly. He added that the quake provides "an opportunity for our leadership to moderate those international, regional and domestic political struggles which take such a toll on our energies". Planes have been arriving from countless Arab and European countries at the provincial capital of Kerman loaded with relief supplies, volunteers and dogs trained to find bodies and survivors. 34 search and rescue teams from 28 countries are now at work on the ground. Iran has welcomed aid from all over the world, with the single exception of Israel, whose existence it does not recognise. The earthquake also provided stimulus for a further thaw in Iranian-American relations. On Tuesday, the US made a good-will gesture, announcing that it is prepared to resume discreet discussions with the Islamic republic over Iraq, Afghanistan and other issues. "We are prepared to engage in limited discussions with the government of Iran about areas of mutual interest as appropriate," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said this week. This move came after Iran accepted US assistance in dealing with the aftermath of the quake despite tense relations and long-severed diplomatic ties between the two countries. President Bush had recently characterised Iran as being part of an "axis of evil" along with Iraq and North Korea, while Iran has long referred to the US as the "Great Satan". American relief planes have already arrived, and the US has also announced that it will dispatch about 40 doctors to Bam. American airmen and Iranian soldiers worked together to unload the first plane, which was also the first American flight to Iran since the Iranian hostage crisis ended in 1981. Washington broke ties with Iran after the US Embassy was stormed in 1979, leading to 52 Americans being held hostage for 444 days. On the domestic level, the tragedy in Bam also seems to have succeeded in creating a sense of national unity which Iranian analysts had found hard to detect in preceding years. Tehranis have reportedly been flooding into hospitals to offer sympathy and comfort to the hundreds of injured survivors who were flown to Tehran over the weekend. They were also shown on Iranian state television donating canned food, blankets and clothes to the survivors of the earthquake. Meanwhile Monday saw Iranian officials visiting the earthquake-shattered city, which lies 1000 kilometres southeast of Tehran, to express their condolences and share the people's grief. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, pledged to rebuild Bam, and said he was confident that it would soon rise again as a prosperous and economically-vibrant city. Iranian President Mohamed Khatami also flew in on the same day, to declare that "the town of Bam must reappear on the map of Iran ... within two years." However, neither top-level official visits nor optimistic statements were able to prevent Iranians from opening fire on what they believe to be their government's mismanagement of the crisis. Many people in Iran believe that spontaneous community solidarity has played a greater role in responding to the crisis than official action. Iran is prone to earthquakes, but the scale of the tragedy in Bam still took the country by surprise. The earthquake measured 6.6 on the Richter scale, and though it lasted only a few seconds, it was enough to turn the city into "a wasteland", in the words of the Iranian interior minister. Over 70 per cent of the city's buildings were destroyed, and the whole of the historic quarter was razed to the ground, including a large part of the 2000-year-old Arg-e-Bam citadel, which has long been a popular tourist attraction. Many have pointed to the traditional sun-dried mud-brick construction of the houses as the prime reason for the catastrophe. The fact that the quake struck before dawn on Friday, while most people were still asleep, also aggravated the death toll. "I don't know how many quakes we must have for the government to make the buildings in our country earthquake-proof," one Iranian girl told the British daily The Guardian. "We have had three major earthquakes in the past three decades," she added. "Thousands of people have died but nothing has been done. Why?" In 1990, a major earthquake in northwest Iran left 35,000 people dead, 100,000 injured and 500,000 homeless. As an editorial published in the Iran Daily newspaper pointed out, "several fault lines pass through Iran and quakes have been in our company for almost a millennium, yet little if anything has been done to effectively contain and control natural disasters." Mahmoud Shams Al-Wa'etheen, an Iranian political analyst, agreed that none of the various governments which have held power since the Islamic Revolution have made this issue a priority. "Iran has a great deal of experience in facing earthquakes," he told the Weekly, "but, unfortunately, we are experienced in dealing with them after they occur, not before. No precautions have been taken to limit the number of casualties and prevent a large-scale crisis." However, he also pointed out that this was the first earthquake in the region around Bam for more than 50 years, and that even before that, the only seismic events recorded were relatively minor. Indeed, it was the fact that Bam was seen as relatively earthquake-free which had encouraged the cultural heritage institutions to work so hard to preserve the area and oppose any major construction plans. As a result, when Bam's population boomed, local builders had been limited to constructing cheap, jerry-built homes, or simply adding extra floors to existing fragile houses. For the nearly seven million people living in the capital Tehran, the earthquake in Bam is not only a national tragedy, but a reminder of the possible consequences of a major earthquake in their own region. As all Tehranis know, their city lies on the southern fault line that runs along the Al- Borz heights, so there is a good chance they will suffer a substantial earthquake in their turn at some point. According to a study by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency, a serious quake could destroy 80 per cent of the buildings in some districts of Tehran. Experts estimate that the resulting casualty toll could be as high as one million, and some have even advised the government to relocate the capital. However such a move would be extremely costly and difficult. Instead, new building regulations have been introduced, in the hope of ensuring that at least the new-built quarters of the city will be relatively quake-proof.
