Within eleven minutes on 11 August 2012, twin earthquakes measured 6.3 and 6.4 on the Richter scale jolted Ahar and Varzaqan in northwestern Iran, claiming 300 lives and leaving thousands of injured in rural villages.12 The magnitude of the earthquakes was so immense that more than a hundred villages were 70-90% destroyed, while 20 being totally flattened. The primary estimations were suggestive of low number of casualties compared to the last major earthquakes that have recently happened in Iran. This could be attributed to the incident happening in the middle of the day when men had been working their fields. The official rescue operations started after the event searching for the victims trapped under the rubble and providing emergency shelters for the survivors. However, people from the unaffected neighboring towns arrived much earlier to offer their assistance to their compatriots. Nonetheless, the death toll increased as the rescuers failed to reach the areas which were inaccessible by road and to dig the victims out of rubble in the entirely-leveled areas. Thanks to the early establishment of triage team consisting of experienced medical staff, 961 severely injured were transferred to and underwent life-saving operations in the nearest referral hospitals in Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan Province, of which 38 died.
Language: en
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