Elderly Woman Rescued From Iranian Quake
Iranian rescue workers pulled a woman in her 90s out of the rubble Saturday, nine days after an earthquake razed this city. U.N. officials warned many other survivors were suffering psychological disorder after the deaths of their loved ones and the destruction of their homes.
“No one expected her to be alive. It’s a miracle,” provincial government spokesman Asadollah Iranmanesh told The Associated Press. Iranmanesh had not seen the woman, but he said she emerged able to talk.
The official Iranian news agency quoted the Red Crescent Society as identifying the woman as Sharbanou Mazandarani, 97. Iranmanesh said she was believed to be between 90 and 100 years old.
A situation report by the U.N. Disaster Assessment Coordination Team said the confirmed death toll from the Dec. 26 quake had risen to 29,700 with the addition of 1,700 burials in villages around the southeastern city of Bam. It said there are believed to be at least 5,000 unregistered burials.
“Post-traumatic stress disorder is highly prevalent,” the U.N. report said. On Friday the U.S. field hospital operated on a young Iranian soldier who tried to commit suicide by shooting himself after discovering the Dec. 26 quake had wiped out his family.
“If we don’t pay the best attention to this, it will lead to more cases of depression, suicide and other mental health problems,” said Dr. Mohammad Farojpour, the head of Kerman province’s mental health department.
French and German aid groups were flying in a total of 130 psychologists and psychiatrists to counsel survivors, the U.N. report said. The Iranian Red Crescent Society has already deployed 40 women counselors to Bam.
The quake of magnitude 6.6 damaged beyond repair as much as 85 percent of Bam’s houses and buildings, the report said. Camps of tents with heating are being erected around the city, U.N. officials said. Up to now, the homeless have been living in unheated tents set up amid the ruins.
Farojpour said that among the many things disrupted by the quake was the supply of opium to the city’s addicts. Before the temblor, an estimated 20 percent of people over the age of 15 in a population of 80,000 were believed to be addicted.
Methadone, codeine and sterile syringes were being given to drug addicts, Farojpour said.
The United Nations plans to complete within four days an assessment of the city’s needs for water, sanitation, food and shelter. The facts are to be presented in an appeal to international donors.
At least five or six countries, including the United States, are working on the review with the United Nations.
Bill Garvelink, head of the US AID team in Bam, has said the destruction was worse than any quake-zone he had ever seen.
“It’s incredible,” Garvelink said. “Bam is literally a rubble pile. I haven’t seen any business functioning and you don’t see anybody living in their homes.”
On Friday, Iran’s state radio, which is controlled by conservatives, accused U.S. President George W. Bush of interference in Iran. Bush had said he was glad Iran accepted U.S. assistance, but its government must embrace democratic freedoms and turn over its detainees from the al-Qaida terror group. Iran says its handling of the al-Qaida detainees is an internal matter.
The U.S. team in Bam has been generally well received by local doctors and citizens. Washington and Tehran have had no diplomatic relations since militants seized the U.S. Embassy in the Iranian capital in 1979.
Figures for the overall dead have varied according to differing estimates of the number of bodies still under the rubble. Earlier this week a U.N. report said the death toll was at least 33,000, but only 28,000 people had been buried. A provincial government spokesman, Asadollah Iranmanesh, has predicted the final toll would be between 30,000 and 40,000.