Why the Iran Earthquake Death Toll is a Failure of Governance!
by Patrick S. Lasswell [A Blogger United In The Struggle]
http://pslasswell.blogspot.com/ I'm attending a First Responder (FR) advanced emergency care course these days. One of the instructors was involved in an incident this month where he came across a man laying in the middle of the road. He stopped, called 911, and within one minute he had an ambulance, a fire truck, and three patrol cars. One minute.
He told us about this incident because it was somewhat remarkable for its speed and scope of response, but it also illustrated an important point about the level of coverage in the metropolitan area. Anywhere in urban Portland, within five minutes of calling 911, the standard level of response is three EMT-Paramedics on site and treating the patient.
While we complain about our government, often with good cause; as an entity to serve the populace, it does really quite well. The communications system needed to transfer the emergency messages, the road system to carry the emergency vehicles, the building codes to prevent emergencies, the response coordination, the emergency services training, and the emergency responders are all there either because the government led the way, did the work, or in many instances had the decency to get out of the way of others who lead. Of paramount importance to our national emergency care apparatus is that lives are not wasted because of insufficient response.
Dictators care about power, not people. Regardless of the inane revolutionary mouthing of the chattering class, the fundamental indication of a government for, of, and by the people is their treatment of the people. This summer, more than fifteen thousand people died in France because the labor leadership is stronger than the people they pretend to protect. Mandated short work weeks, onerous overtime rules, and a month of vacation caused systemic failure of their emergency management system and more civilians died needlessly in France than in Iraq since the invasion.
This week in Iran, more than forty thousand people died needlessly because militant Islam does not care how many people it kills in its drive to religious purity. Twenty-five years ago, a quake more than ten times as powerful killed fewer people. Thirteen years ago, fifty thousand people died in an earthquake five to ten times as powerful.
Location of the epicenter plays some part, but an institutional indifference for the people of Iran is the real culprit here. The nation is going to be hit by earthquakes, and no fatwah is going to change that. By any reasonable standard, the government of Iran failed its people this week. Again. When will the Mullah's yield power to a government that cares enough about its people to prepare for earthquakes and other emergencies that will come? How many more hundreds of thousands must die so the Mullah's can indulge their addiction to intolerance?
http://activistchat.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=746Quake aid may open door for US and Iran
December 29, 2003
Christian Science Monitor
By Ilene R. Prusher
The US delivered about 120,000 pounds of aid to earthquake-stricken Iran Sunday.
ISTANBUL, TURKEY – For the first time in more than a decade, four American military aircraft landed in Iran Sunday in a gesture between two countries more noted for acrimony than mutual aid.
The US, joining dozens of other countries in providing emergency aid after Friday's earthquake, delivered about 120,000 pounds of medical supplies and water to the nation once branded by President Bush as part of the "axis of evil."
But it is often at humanity's most trying moments that old foes are brought together in a spirit of cooperation and compassion.
"The reception was very warm," said Lt. Col. Vic Harris in a phone interview after returning to his base in Kuwait. "We worked side by side with Iranian soldiers to download the supplies. The Iranian base commander said he hoped this would be the beginning of a new relationship."
Diplomats and analysts see Washington's offer of help - and Tehran's willingness to accept it - as a test of how far each is prepared to go in publicizing a new softening of the antagonism that has marked their relationship for a quarter-century. "The Americans are starting to send in aid and it's a very positive step," says one European diplomat reached in Tehran. "Whether the momentum of goodwill is sustained is a different question."
With the death toll in the earthquake in southern Iran now estimated at more than 20,000, and up to 100,000 made homeless, the need is great.
If recent history is any guide, aid extended at such a moment can open doors that seem welded shut. Here in Turkey, a country which suffered from an equally destructive earthquake just over four years ago, generations of enmity with neighboring Greece reached a historic turning point when Greek officials sent over rescue teams. Not long after that August 1999 earthquake, Athens also suffered a major quake, and Turks in turn sent in their best emergency teams.
"We worked in great harmony with the Greeks, and of course this turned the relationship in a much more positive direction," says Nasuh Mahruki, the president of AKUT, the Turkish Search and Rescue Association, a volunteer group which assisted in the Athens earthquake and has sent teams to Iran.
After several days of rescue efforts, Mr. Mahruki recalls, the Greek president invited the Turkish teams to his official residence to thank them. "It was a great honor to be there as part of a Turkish team," he says. "Then the two countries' foreign ministers started to talk, and then the nongovernmental organizations got in contact with each other, and relations got better."
Moreover, he says, average Greeks and Turks developed a better image of the "other" - as human beings eager to help. "Even at that time, we knew that this was the beginning of a new era between Turks and Greeks," says Mahruki.
Others says that the countries' leaders were simply ready to tame decades of tensions. "If the governments want to use it as an excuse, it's a wonderful excuse," says Mehmet Ali Birand," a prominent Turkish columnist and commentator who covered the 1999 earthquakes here and in Athens. "If there is a mood in the governments" to portray that aid as a watershed, he says, that's one option - but only one of many. "The man in the street really sympathizes with those coming to help. I felt it here and I felt it in Greece," Mr. Birand says.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1229/p01s01-wome.html