← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · kminta
Thread ID: 11629 | Posts: 4 | Started: 2003-12-28
2003-12-28 03:32 | User Profile
[I]Compare this with the results all of the bombings and missile-attacks by America and its allies, over the 12-year period the since first to current aggressions against the single city of Baghdad, Iraq, and it should become apparent that Man is wholly incapable of "destroying the Earth" with our combined weaponry.[/I]
[B][URL=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/27/international/middleeast/27QUAK.html?th]The New York Times[/URL] [/B]
[B]Quake in Iran Kills Thousands and Ravages an Ancient City[/B] By NAZILA FATHI
Published: December 27, 2003
TEHRAN, Dec. 26 A powerful earthquake rocked Bam, an ancient city in southeastern Iran, early Friday morning, killing thousands and destroying 70 to 90 percent of the residential areas. Bam is 610 miles southeast of Tehran, in Kerman Province.
The official Islamic Republic News Agency said the earthquake registered 6.3 on the standard magnitude scale. The United States Geological Survey put the magnitude at 6.7.
Several aftershocks during the day, one measuring 5.3, jolted the city.
The provincial governor general, Muhammad Ali Karimi, put the initial number of dead at 5,000 to 6,000, but said the toll was expected to rise as high as 20,000. Some 30,000 were reported to be injured, many in critical condition.
"Many people have died and people are buried under the rubble," Mr. Karimi said on Iranian state television. "We are doing everything we can to rescue the injured and unearth the dead."
Details on the scale of damage were skimpy, he said, because telephone communication was cut off with Bam and nearby towns, including Jiroft and Kohnouj.
One of the most important structures lost was the Bam citadel, a mud fortress that traced its origins back 2,000 years, when the central section collapsed.
Waverly Person, a geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey, said the force of the earthquake was magnified because it was relatively shallow, originating only 20 to 30 miles below the earth's surface.
The earthquake occurred at 5:30 a.m. Power lines and water services remained cut off the whole day. Witnesses said that aid workers did not arrive until the afternoon and that in the meantime local residents and villagers brought shovels and bulldozers to dig and used their trucks to carry the dead.
Worried relatives rushed to Bam from the surrounding areas and caused vast traffic jams, which slowed the rescue effort.
The state television called the earthquake a "national disaster" and said the city had been turned into a pile of dust. Film showed survivors sobbing and searching the rubble for family members.
Many residents were left without shelter in the cold, with the temperature falling to the low 20's. Bodies were laid out in the open, shrouded in blankets and sheets or hauled into the trunks of cars.
"Families are sitting next to their flattened houses with sometimes several corpses of family members lying next to them," said Mehdi Taher, a photographer. "They have made fires to keep themselves warm, and the situation cannot be worse."
Bam has a population of 200,000, and most houses are made of mud or brick and cannot withstand earthquakes. In the Old City, the narrow alleys made the rescue operation more arduous.
Hospitals and government buildings also collapsed, and helicopters and planes were dispatched to deliver aid supplies and transfer the injured to hospitals around the country. But the number of casualties was so high that many were lying outside in the cold waiting for help, state television reported.
Buildings in Iran, many of which are made from clay tile, brick and concrete blocks, can quickly become unstable when subjected to even the slightest jolt, said Jim Harris, an engineer and chairman of a committee that develops structural loading standards for the American Society of Civil Engineers.
Structures are bulky and have trouble absorbing the force of an earthquake, he said. That, combined with Iran's high population density, means that a collapsing building is likely to take large numbers of people with it.
Another classic flaw in older housing, Dr. Harris said, is a lack of steel reinforcement, which makes the buildings flimsy.
At Bam's only cemetery, 500 bodies were laid out, ready for burial in a trench dug by a bulldozer, The Associated Press reported.
2003-12-28 04:00 | User Profile
I would love to be able to read someone like Abe Foxman's mind after he immediately found out about this (Or any incident in the ME for that matter).
2003-12-28 08:27 | User Profile
Compare this with the results all of the bombings and missile-attacks by America and its allies, over the 12-year period the since first to current aggressions against the single city of Baghdad, Iraq, and it should become apparent that Man is wholly incapable of "destroying the Earth" with our combined weaponry.
I don't know about that, kminta. The US and Russia each have enough nukes to kill off all of each others' inhabitants several times over. Then the rest of the world would probably be plunged into a "radioactive ice age" by all the dust that would block out the sun after being kicked up into the atmosphere.
If we take nukes (and possibly certain unknown bioweapons) out of the picture and only consider conventional weaponry, then I agree with your statement. It should be kept in mind, however, that most bombings by the US and its allies were undertaken with the intent to limit civilian casualties -- not because of any moral principles on the part of the US, but for political reasons.
Anyway, enough of my quibbling. With regards to the devastation in Iran, I strongly suspect that many "Christian Zionist" fanatics and fundamentalist Jews are viewing this terrible crisis as a punishment from God -- an asinine viewpoint if there ever was one. I haven't heard any of those loonies call it "divine punishment" yet, but they probably will if they haven't already.
2003-12-28 17:10 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angler]I don't know about that, kminta. The US and Russia each have enough nukes to kill off all of each others' inhabitants several times over. Then the rest of the world would probably be plunged into a "radioactive ice age" by all the dust that would block out the sun after being kicked up into the atmosphere.
If we take nukes (and possibly certain unknown bioweapons) out of the picture and only consider conventional weaponry, then I agree with your statement. It should be kept in mind, however, that most bombings by the US and its allies were undertaken with the intent to limit civilian casualties -- not because of any moral principles on the part of the US, but for political reasons.
Anyway, enough of my quibbling. With regards to the devastation in Iran, I strongly suspect that many "Christian Zionist" fanatics and fundamentalist Jews are viewing this terrible crisis as a punishment from God -- an asinine viewpoint if there ever was one. I haven't heard any of those loonies call it "divine punishment" yet, but they probably will if they haven't already.[/QUOTE]
The only "people" that I have trouble with owning nuclear weapons are the the Israelis. As you know, they like to say,,,,,,'NEVER AGAIN", to me that means that if they ever see themselves loosing a ground war then they will unleash hell on earth by using their nuclear weapons. The State of Israel is worse than Iraq, Iran or any other nation in the world, they are a danger to humanity.