Earthquake needs assessment 'mammoth task' - UN

An aid-needs assessment carried out by the UN has highlighted the shortage of food and water in the southeastern Iranian city of Bam - hit by a destructive earthquake six days ago - and surrounding villages. With the recent drop in temperature and the consequent risk of hypothermia, the aid-needs assessment is focusing on shelter. “What we’ve been looking at is the quality and quantity of the temporary accommodation,” Ted Pearn, the manager of the UN On-Site Operations Coordination Centre (OSOC), part of the UN Disaster Assistance Coordination Team (UNDAC), told IRIN. Temporary accommodation consists of tents or tarpaulins. Many survivors are still without tents and rely on small fires to keep warm through the bitterly cold nights. Others only have one tent for up to two families, but the objective is to get up to 100,000 people some form of protection from the elements. Erection of 3 tent camps has started in the city. The camps are designed to accommodate up to 60,000 people each. Due to the sheer scale of this disaster, the aid assessment team has not yet been able to identify how many people are still in need of basic essentials. “We’ll be assessing that for a couple of days and we won’t know before then. It’s a mammoth task,” Ted Pearn said. Electricity is back in what's left of the city, but as most of the city is in ruins, there are very few electricity power lines still standing. Water tankers are also in operation, rumbling through the devastated streets. They provide supplies of clean water – crucial to prevent the spread of water-borne diseases like dysentery and cholera. An Italian field hospital was set up on Tuesday and has so far treated 150 people. “Initially we were mainly dealing with trauma from the earthquake,” Marina Balbinot, a Red Cross nurse at the hospital, told IRIN. “Now it is more upper respiratory problems and diarrhoea is starting. There is now no indication that [the diarrhoea] is infectious, it’s just due to poor weather and housing conditions,” she added. The World Health Organization (WHO) has not reported the outbreak of communicable diseases in the city or surrounding region. Another danger comes from falling masonry in damaged houses. “In each area there are hundreds of houses which are semi-ruined,” Dr Tabatabaei, the Iranian Red Crescent Society (IRCS) head coordinator of foreign relief teams, told IRIN. “When people go in to collect their things, blocks fall on them and injure them. A small girl was hurt today and we could not save her. We are getting many reports from our staff about this.” A US aid team has arrived in Bam. The team consists of 81 members, with a search and rescue team from the Fairfax Fire Service of Virginia, 65 doctors, medics and nurses, as well as structural engineers. On Wednesday they established a field hospital in the city. “We have two doctors and two structural engineers so we don’t need to bring anybody else in when we go into a job. We didn’t have any trouble getting into the country. Everything was facilitated very quickly. We’ve been very warmly welcomed,” Steve Catlin, the coordinator for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), told IRIN. Even though the hunt for survivors has been rapidly winding down, over the last few days there have been some ‘miracle’ rescues. A French search and rescue team pulled an elderly woman alive from the ruins of her house on Wednesday. She had spent six days trapped underground. French doctor, Francois de Salge-Villegieu, said he believed the woman was about eighty-years old, was miraculously unharmed and was barely covered in dust. The military also confirmed on Wednesday that an Iranian infantry unit rescued a family of four alive in the nearby village of Baravaat, a day earlier. They had been buried under their house for five days – managing to survive on water from a tank that had toppled in the earthquake. But these incidents remain the exception - official government figures indicate that at least 28,100 people had been buried. This number, however may rise to 40,000 or more as bodies in outlying villages are discovered. Aid continues to flood in to Bam. Donors, the UN and international organisations have pledged or announced their assistance. The value of the financial and in-kind contributions recorded by the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Wednesday amounted to US $ 71.8 million.