Boulders, crushed cars litter mountain road a day after quake that killed at least 35

Saturday, May 29th 2004, 4:49 pm

By: News On 6

MARZANABAD, Iran (AP) _ Giant boulders and crushed cars littered a mountain road Saturday, a day after landslides were unleashed by a strong earthquake in northern and central Iran that killed at least 35 people and injured 250 others.

A helicopter flying a provincial governor and three of his aides who had been surveying the damage crashed in the northern mountains Saturday, killing all eight on board.

Fatollah Najafi was busy with a dozen customers at his roadside restaurant Friday afternoon when he felt the ground move and ran out to see huge boulders crushing cars and people.

``It was like a bomb exploded under my feet,'' Najafi, 60, recalled Saturday. ``The only thing I saw was huge stones that looked like they weighed tons rolling down the mountain, smashing cars and people.''

One of the boulders hit Najafi's modest restaurant near Marzanabad, 45 miles north of Tehran.

``Thank God I'm alive,'' he said.

The quake was felt in eight provinces in central and northern Iran, damaging more than 80 villages.

Many of those killed were smashed by falling boulders or buried in their cars along the mountainous road that connects Tehran with the city of Chalous, about 55 miles north of the capital.

But there were no scenes of devastated villages, a common sight after earthquakes in Iran, which sits on a major fault-line.

A magnitude-6.6 quake in Bam, a historical city in southeastern Iran, killed more than 26,000 people last December.

Large cracks riddled the road, which was covered by rocks, giant boulders and damaged cars. Trucks were being used to haul away the cars.

One driver squeezed into his car, whose rear side and passenger compartment were completely crushed, and slowly drove it away.

The landslides cut off road access to about a dozen villages, and army helicopters were ferrying rescue teams to assess the situation in those villages.

The Iranian Red Crescent Society dispatched rescue teams with search dogs, as well as medical teams, tents and lanterns to the stricken areas. The official Islamic Republic News Agency quoted officials as saying about 50 villages were shaken.

Official Tehran television reported that the governor of Qazvin province was in the crashed helicopter, together with three aides, a journalist working for the state-run television and three crew members. The report did not name any of the officials, but the governor of Qazvin is Masoud Emami.

The helicopter crashed in the mountains just north of the city of Qazvin, about 90 miles northwest of Tehran.

Twenty aftershocks were reported after Friday's quake, including one 4.6-magnitude temblor Saturday morning in Bam that state-run Tehran television said caused ``some damage but no casualties.''

A weak tremor that lasted about five seconds was felt around midday Saturday in Tehran, which has a population of about 10 million people. Friday's quake had cracked or shattered windows in the extreme north of the capital, more than 60 miles from the hardest-hit villages.

Out of fear of a greater quake, many people in Tehran slept outdoors.

Bijan Dastari, a senior Red Crescent Society official, said 35 people had been killed and 250 injured in the earthquake, measured at magnitude-6.2 by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Tehran's University's seismological center measured the quake at 5.5 magnitude.

The USGS bases its magnitude calculations by looking at measurements from a number of seismographs around the world. This figure can sometimes differ from a measurement recorded closer to the epicenter.

The quake broke up a wedding party in the village of Anarak, about 45 miles north of Tehran. Dozens of panicked guests rushed outdoors when the ground began trembling and walls began shaking.

Soleiman Mirdar, one of the guests, said the groom and his guests were getting ready to leave for the home of the bride for the wedding ceremony when the quake struck.

``Everybody was happy. I was dancing with other relatives. Suddenly, the house started shaking and the guests ran out in panic,'' Mirdar said.

He said some suffered minor injuries and the homes of the groom and the bride were damaged.