Estimates of death toll in quake surpass 20,000

Iranian officials said at least 20,000 people died in Friday's predawn temblor in the city of 80,000, and some feared that the figure will rise even higher when searchers reach the outlying villages that are home to an additional 100,000 people.

"No such city as Bam exists anymore. It's leveled to the ground," said Mojtaba Hossainzadeh in the provincial capital, Kerman.

Hossainzadeh stood at the hospital bed of a young cousin, one of the 30,000 injured in the quake. Elias Jeddi, 13, with IVs in both hands and a tube in his nose, testified to the seemingly random combination of fortune and science that counted as fate in Bam early Friday.

His father was in the habit of waking early -- answering the muezzin's call to morning prayer -- so he was already on his feet when the ground began moaning at about 5:30 a.m. Dashing from bedroom to bedroom, the elder Jeddi roused his wife and daughter before the most massive convulsion brought down the house. Elias was upstairs asleep in the room he shared with his brother.

"I heard the walls and the floor moving. And I heard the noises. It was horrible," Elias said. "I woke up and everything went dark." He was covered by bricks and beams, but after about an hour, his father and older brother pulled him out. "Then the house caught on fire because of the gas."

Throughout yesterday, thousands of survivors gathered up the injured in Bam and drove 125 miles northwest to Kerman for medical treatment. So many vehicles jammed the highway that the normally two-hour drive took five hours. Many victims reportedly died on the way.

Iranian and outside relief officials scrambled to organize the flow of aid beginning to reach the city. Residents of Bam, about 630 miles southeast of Tehran, the capital, complained bitterly on state television of the tardiness of their government's response, and aid officials acknowledged some confusion on the ground yesterday.

"They haven't done anything for us. We have dug into the ground and dug them out. We received no help. People are dying of cold and hunger," said Mansur Ghoami, whose sister and her two children, ages 3 months and 2, were killed in the quake.

The bodies, wrapped in brightly patterned blankets, were folded in the back of the car Ghoami steered to the front gate of Kerman's largest hospital after midnight. He wanted to leave the bodies in a cold place overnight before burial later in the day.

"We were all asleep," Ghoami said. "It just happened in a second."

Iranian officials concede that they have been overwhelmed by the disaster, the country's worst since a 1990 quake north of Tehran killed more than 35,000 people. A UN disaster specialist, however, gave the government good marks for its quick response.

"For disaster response, their capacity is very good. They have helicopters. They have hundreds of airplanes. They have relief supplies," said Hossain Jafari, the resident UN Development Program disaster specialist in Tehran. "But for preparedness and prevention . . . their capacity is very low."

Another official added: "What's clear is that Iran is on a fault line. And considering it's on a fault line, you would imagine the government would be better prepared for earthquakes."

Survivors blamed shoddy construction practices considered normal in Iran, as in much of the developing world, for the high death toll. Bam, founded 1,800 years ago, is known for its antiquity: A massive, but now crumbled, mud-brick fortress drew tourists from around the world.

The city was also something of a boom town, with new residential neighborhoods springing up in recent years to house workers for a new automobile plant and other factories.

The modern brick home that collapsed on Jamileh Hossainzadeh was only a year old. "I had no chance to think about anything," she said. "Suddenly the house went up in the air and fell to the ground."

Her brother pulled her from the wreckage. "He's an engineer and he paid a lot to build a house that would withstand earthquakes," she said. "In that house only one flowerpot fell to the ground."

Survivors yesterday were consumed by the most immediate concerns. Bam now has no electricity, running water, or gas, and most residents are homeless.

The United Nations delivered 1,000 tents already stockpiled elsewhere in Iran, but said 30,000 more were needed. Jafari said that only one refugee-style tent city is planned, however, and that it likely will serve orphans.

A steady stream of jets carried other provisions and aid workers directly into Bam and Kerman.

Search-and-rescue teams from Turkey, Germany, and other countries were on the ground, but an aid official said one of the teams was left to wait hours without being told where to start.

"There's no need for any more search-and-rescue teams," Jafari said. "But there are a lot of needs."