Relief Efforts
Rescue operators suggested that an aerial and on-land search should be initiated to help victims. Officials expressed worries that people had gone for over a week with no aid. Iranian wrestling star Gholamreza Takhti gathered blankets, money, and food for victims and transported them by trucks. Because government response was slow, students at the University of Tehran took matters into their own hands. After gathering supplies, the students organized an effort to dispatch medical students and interns to the site of the disaster. Their teams were however blocked by Iranian National Guard members who had been commanded to kill any civilians who tried to help victims; writer Marcello di Cintio cites in Poets and Pahlevans: A Journey into the Heart of Iran that the "Shah was not about to let a crowd of students draw attention to his inept relief efforts".
Read more about this topic: 1962 Bou'in-Zahra Earthquake
Famous quotes containing the words relief and/or efforts:
“[T]he late Samuel McChord Crothers, genial wit and essayist, ... after listening to the speeches at a certain Harvard Commencement remarked that he gathered that the world had been in great danger, but that all would now be well.”
—For the State of Massachusetts, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“With all the efforts made by modern society to nurture and educate the young, how stupid it is to permit the mothers of young children to spend themselves in the coarser work of the world!”
—Jane Addams (1860–1935)