Sat, Jan 03, 2004 page6

• Quake survivors recall fatal last moments

  • AP
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  Mehrdad Vakili remembers his father screaming, "Get out of the house!" as Iran's devastating earthquake began shaking the walls of the family's home. The 12-year-old boy ran but was immediately pinned by rubble.

  Mehrdad was rescued. His father and younger brother were not.

  "I don't want to live without them," Mehrdad said Thursday as a female relative dabbed his tears with a handkerchief at his bedside in a Kerman hospital, where he was recovering from a broken leg and severe stomach wounds.

  Survivors brought to the provincial capital recounted narrow brushes with death during the Dec. 26 earthquake that struck at dawn, wiping out entire families in their homes, killing nearly 30,000 people and devastating the city of Bam.

  In the flattened city, US aid workers began admitting patients to an American field hospital -- a rare contact between the nations since US-Iranian relations were broken by the seizure of the Embassy in Tehran in 1979.

  Taking their first look at the damage, six American aid workers passed the mangled remains of crushed cars and people still sifting through the wreckage for their battered possessions.

  Thursday marked the seventh day after the quake and was a day of mass mourning, with Iran's supreme leader holding a memorial service in Bam. Iranian Shiites traditionally observe a mourning period for a deceased relative a week after the death.

  At a cemetery outside Bam where corpses have been buried in mass graves, families clustered around burial mounds, hugging and sobbing.

  One mourner, Yadolah Khodabakhshzade, lost 18 family members, who were sleeping in three adjacent houses that collapsed in the quake. "It's God's will," he said haltingly.

  In an effort to identify bodies, police have set up three laptop computers at the Bam cemetery that show a morbid slideshow of 400 photographs of the faces of unclaimed bodies.

  A crowds of mourners gathered and watched as bloodied, dusty faces appeared on the screen one after the next -- each accompanied by an identification number. The slideshows have led to 30 positive identifications, a policeman said.

  Estimates on the death toll varied. A UN report that cited government figures said the death toll by Tuesday was least 33,000. A provincial government spokesman, Asadollah Iranmanesh, said 26,500 bodies were confirmed recovered and buried in Bam or nearby towns and predicted the final toll would be between 30,000 and 40,000.

  Although hopes for survivors were fading, workers said they rescued three more people -- one on Thursday and two on Wednesday. Normally, people trapped under collapsed buildings can survive three days, a mark that passed Monday morning.

  Medical workers reported more good news amid the gloom as five babies were born since Tuesday -- three boys delivered in a French field hospital and two girls delivered in a Ukrainian field hospital.

  At Kerman's Afzalipor Hospital, other survivors recalled their traumas in the rubble.

  Hadi Pashouei was buried up to his neck by the wreckage of the Bam police station where he was on duty when the quake hit -- and remained there for three agonizing hours until he was discovered and pulled out.

  "It was worse than hell," Pashouei, 19, said. "Bricks and cement piled on top of me. You want to escape, you can't move. You have pain, there's no cure."

  Mehrdad, the 12-year-old, was trapped for two hours until his uncle dug him out.

  "My dad was buried alive as he rushed to save us," the boy said. "Nobody was able to save the life of my dad and brother."
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