Children from the quake-devastated southeastern Iranian city of Bam were going back to school yesterday, as the government unveiled plans to move survivors to massive camps away from the rubble.
With the help of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), Iranian authorities laid on dozens of tents and prefabricated buildings across the destroyed city to gauge the full scale of the tragedy by registering surviving pupils and teachers.
Local officials estimate 9,000 students and 2,000 teachers died when the quake struck before dawn on Dec. 26, killing a total of at least 30,000 people.
"I lost my father, my sister and my mother. But thanks to God, my children survived," said Mehdi Delijani, who was accompanying his two children to sign their names at their former school -- which like most other buildings in the city had collapsed.
For pupils and teachers, it was a traumatic moment of discovering who among them was alive or dead.
"I just found out that two of my classmates are gone," said Shima, the 13-year-old daughter of Mehdi.
"I am devastated," she said, in tears as she lined up to sign her name on the class register laid out inside a shipping container. "But I'm happy the schools will reopen -- I am afraid of the aftershocks so I need to talk to people."
Elementary teacher Tahereh Farokhi-Nejad, who has been helping pupils from deprived areas for the past 28 years, said she had lost at least one pupil.
"Out of the 14 pupils, I am sure at least one was killed. You cannot imagine how I feel to have lost them -- they were making such good progress," she said, explaining she had moved her own children to the nearby city of Kerman because each of the dozens of aftershocks made them "scream during the night."
Most of the quake's survivors have been sleeping in tents outside the rubble of their homes since the quake hit, enduring freezing conditions and with few sanitary facilities.
Mehdi Jahangiri, director general of planning in Kerman province's governorate, said the survivors -- who number at least 50,000 -- would soon be moved to a network of large camps around the city as the job of clearing away the rubble and collecting the remaining dead bodies goes into full swing.
"We are preparing the ground for the survivors to move to five camps with the capacity for 15,000 families," he said, saying the Iranian Red Crescent would be administering the camps.
Speaking to the state news agency IRNA, Turkey's State Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin said Ankara would be providing some 800 prefabricated houses within the next two days.
Jahangiri said that 14,900 family ration booklets had also been distributed so far. Interior Minister Abolvahed Musavi-Lari was also in Bam to oversee the massive relief and recovery operation, as well as the first steps to drawing up a comprehensive reconstruction plan -- expected to take about a month.
Iran hopes half the reconstruction cost, at the moment estimated to total at least US$500 million, will come from foreign donors.
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