IRAN: Death at Siesta Time

It was siesta time in Lar (pop. 15,000), a provincial capital in southern Iran, and most of the city was asleep. Down in the brick-domed bazaar, a few shopkeepers haggled with farmers over fruits and vegetables to be sold later to housewives. About the only other activity was a gathering of girl students at Soraya School to celebrate National Children's Day and render thanks to Allah and the Shah, in roughly equal measure, for the blessings of a secondary education.

Suddenly from deep underneath the jagged Zagros mountain range came a 50-second, stomach-wrenching tremor. A toppling wall buried 70 girl students, killing 58. The dome of the bazaar collapsed like a circus tent after roustabouts removed the center poles. For a moment the stunned city was deathly still. Then the moans of the dying mingled with the wails of the survivors, who clawed with bare hands at the rubble, frantically searching for missing parents or children.

Beneath the dust cloud that shrouded the ruins, an estimated 500 to 700 were dead; 7,000 were homeless. News of other hundreds dead trickled in from villages in the surrounding mountains. Over the course of five days, successive quakes trapped and killed rescue workers trying to dig out survivors from the first disaster. France offered a stethoscope device successfully used in Agadir in March to detect still breathing victims trapped beneath the rubble. The U.S. naval attache in Teheran flew a DC-3 down to the stricken city with emergency supplies and took out survivors. At week's end Queen Farah, who is expecting her first child this fall, offered to take 200 motherless children of Lar into the royal orphanages.