It was after midnight, and like most Iranians, the inhabitants of Gilan and Zanjan provinces were in bed or watching World Cup soccer on television. Then their homes collapsed on top of them. In barely a minute, a huge earthquake flattened more than 100 villages, towns and cities, cutting many of them off from outside help and leaving them vulnerable to the aftershocks that rolled through the hills like thunder. The quake devastated a rich agricultural area in the north of Iran along the Caspian Sea. Iran’s new spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called it a “test of God.” But the disaster soon became a more mundane test of the Iranian government’s ability–after more than a decade of revolution, war and zealous isolation–to work with the outside world to meet the demands of a heartbreaking human crisis.
By the end of last week, the dead were estimated at 35,000, the injured at 100,000 or more and the homeless at 400,000. Touring the disaster zone, Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani said the number of dead probably would increase as bodies were dug from the rubble. Already, the toll surpassed that of the massive 1988 earthquake in nearby Soviet Armenia, where 25,000 people perished. The Iranian tremor was measured by American scientists at 7.7 on the open-ended Richter scale (compared with 6.9 for last year’s San Francisco earthquake, which killed 62 people).
The epicenter of the quake was in the southern Caspian, and the seacoast province of Gilan was hardest hit. At least 6,000 people were said to have died in the town of Rudbar. One survivor there told Iranian television that “a rock as big as a building” had crashed into his house, killing four of his six children. Another man said he had lost 92 relatives. As rescuers dug for survivors, a British relief worker, Harry Leefe, told NEWSWEEK that temperate weather conditions in the mountains were “ideal for finding people alive up to 10 days or two weeks after they have been buried, if they are not seriously injured.” But tragedies were dug up, too. In the nearby town of Manjil, Iranian television showed a woman named Parvin Nemati holding the headless body of one of her daughters, wrapped in a blanket. She watched helplessly as her husband and rescue workers uncovered the lifeless body of another daughter.
President Rafsanjani said Iran would cope mainly with its own resources. But he conceded: “The catastrophe is so serious [that] international help is needed.” The line was drawn at Israel and South Africa, from whom Iran would accept no aid. But other old foes offered help, including Iraq, Iran’s opponent in the gulf war, and the United States, the theocracy’s longstanding “Great Satan.” Washington sent aid without any expectation that it would help the cause of the American hostages held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon. Given the antipathy between the two countries, private American citizens were slow to donate money to Iran. By late last week, the amount collected by the American Red Cross was “nowhere near the numbers generated for Armenia,” said spokesman Brian Ruberry.
Although the Iranians admitted some foreign relief workers, including French doctors and a British search-and-rescue team, they were more interested in money and material. By Saturday, Teheran’s airport was jammed with foreign rescue teams in brightly colored jumpsuits, lugging tons of equipment. “This is why we said we wanted material, not people " complained a hard-pressed Iranian official as he tried to sort out the logistics. An irritated French doctor remarked that in Armenia, he and his colleagues were able to reach stricken areas quickly, even when militiamen blocked their way. “In Armenia, it wasn’t just buildings that crumbled, it was the regime,” replied the Iranian. “I hope that’s not the case here.” For better or worse, Iran’s government was determined to maintain strict control over a desperately needed rescue effort.
