Iran to investigate state-built homes destroyed by deadly quakeroyed by deadly quake
Iranian
President Hassan Rouhani launched an investigation Tuesday into why
government housing built by his hard-line predecessor collapsed while
others withstood a powerful earthquake near the border with Iraq that
killed more than 530 people.
In the
Kurdish town of Sarpol-e-Zahab, which was reconstructed in the decades
since the 1980s war with Iraq, the outer walls of apartment complexes
tumbled away in the magnitude 7.3 earthquake Sunday night. The housing
was built as a part of the "Mehr" or "kindness" project of former
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Some
now-homeless survivors simply wept outside, while others angrily showed
Associated Press journalists the destruction done by the quake.
"Other
buildings near our apartment are not damaged as much because they were
built privately," said Ferdows Shahbazi, 42, who lived in one of the
Mehr buildings.
She sarcastically added: "This is 'kindness' as the name suggests very well!"
Rescuers
used backhoes and other heavy equipment to dig through toppled
buildings in Sarpol-e-Zahab, home to more than half of the dead. The
apartment complexes sit next to lush pastures in the almost entirely
Kurdish province of Kermanshah, nestled in the Zagros Mountains along
the border with Iraq.
Both rescuers
and residents stood on the remains of homes, looking through the rubble.
Searchers used dogs to comb the debris — just as they have since Iran's
2003 earthquake in Bam that killed 26,000 people — although some
clerics insist the animals are unclean.
The
quake badly damaged the Sarpol-e-Zahab hospital, forcing the army to
set up field clinics. The quake also reportedly killed an unspecified
number of soldiers in an army garrison.
Aside
from the 530 people killed in Iran, 7,817 were injured, the state-run
IRNA news agency reported. Health Minister Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi,
who visited Kermanshah on Tuesday, warned that the death toll probably
would rise.
"My feeling is that
number ... will increase since victims were buried in many villages that
their exact statistics will be announced in coming days," he said,
according to the semi-official ISNA news agency.
Rouhani inspected the damage in the province and offered his support.
"This
was a pain for all Iranians," he said. "Representing the nation of
Iran, I offer my condolences to the people of Kermanshah, and tell them
that all of us are behind Kermanshah."
Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif thanked foreign countries offering to
help but wrote on Twitter: "For now, we are able to manage with our own
resources."
Also touring the area
was cleric Abdolhossein Moezi, a representative of Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Moezi said there was a need for more relief
material and "security."
That was
echoed by Nazar Barani, the mayor of the town of Ezgeleh, who told state
TV his constituency still had a "deep need" for food, medicine and
tents. He said 80 per cent of the buildings in the town had been
damaged.
The temblor hit about 19
miles (31 kilometres) outside the eastern Iraqi city of Halabja,
according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and struck 14.4 miles (23.2
kilometres) below the surface, a somewhat shallow depth that can cause
broader damage.
Nine
people were killed in Iraq and 550 were injured, all in the country's
northern, semiautonomous Kurdish region, according to the United
Nations.
The disparity in casualty
tolls has drawn questions from Iranians, especially because so much of
Sarpol-e-Zahab was new. Initial Iranian government estimates suggest the
quake destroyed 12,000 apartments and free-standing homes, and damaged
another 15,000.
Some immediately
pointed to the Mehr homes. About 2 million units were built in Iran,
including scores in Sarpol-e Zahab, as part of a populist program by
Ahmadinejad, who also offered cash payouts and other incentives to
appease the public while Iran faced crippling economic sanctions over
its nuclear program.
But after the
housing was built, some didn't have paved roads or water going to them.
Many warned that the low-quality construction could be a problem in
Iran, which faces near-daily earthquakes and sits on many major fault
lines.
Ahmadinejad's official
channel on the messaging app Telegram, which is popular in Iran, called
the accusations "media slander" and said those who circulated photos and
videos of damaged Mehr homes were "clumsy charlatans."
Ahmadinejad
adviser Ali Akbar Javanfekr also wrote on a website for allies of the
former president: "Heavy waves of propaganda against Mehr are aimed at
covering up the weakness and inefficiency of the (Rouhani)
administration in helping quake-hit people."
In
May, a magnitude 5.7 quake in the northeastern city of Bojnourd heavily
damaged similar Mehr projects there. Many still sit uncompleted across
the country because the program ran out of cash.
Rouhani
said in Sarpol-e-Zahab that the government would look into what went
wrong at the Mehr homes, some of which his administration handed over.
"The
faults and shortcomings in the construction of these buildings should
be investigated," he said. "And the government will surely follow up on
these issues and identify the culprits and introduce them to the
people."
Rouhani added: "We saw what
happened to the Mehr buildings though even a single window was not
broken in people's privately built homes."
He
promised cash payments and loans to those affected so they can build
new homes with contractors of their choice. He also urged local
officials to be generous with disaster relief.
Damage
wasn't limited to housing. In the nearby Kurdish town of Eslamabad, a
hospital only recently inaugurated by the government collapsed, killing
several people there, lawmaker Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh said.
"Several
became victims of treason," the lawmaker said, according to a report by
the semi-official ILNA news agency. "The death toll could have been
much less if the hospital was not destroyed. The city's old hospital,
some 30 years old, did not suffer serious damage."
No comments:
Post a Comment