Experience in War Benefits Iranian Relief Officials Battling Disaster : Earthquake: Foreign aid workers credit the prompt response with preventing even worse consequences.

With tent clinics and med-evac helicopters, Iran relief officials have made practice in war pay off in combatting a devastating earthquake.

Foreign aid workers in the ravaged towns and villages of the quake region Monday credited the prompt response of Iran’s Red Crescent Society with preventing the disaster from being even worse.

“By Saturday, two days after the earthquake, they had tents in the villages for the homeless,” said Christian Brauner, a West German Red Cross disaster-relief specialist. “The war (with Iraq from 1980 to 1988) was a precedent that is now proving useful in relief and medical work.”

Calls went out immediately for blood donors, clothing and food. Manpower was thrown into distribution that, while lacking the appearance of efficiency, nevertheless was fast, the Western workers said.

The helicopter landing zone in a field here in Roudbar, alongside the Safid River, was marked Monday with the dust-whirling activity of a wartime operation.

Most of the seriously injured from Roudbar, Manjil and the mountain villages behind them were evacuated over the weekend. Military helicopters ferried them from the Roudbar landing zone to the city of Rasht, where they were loaded aboard air force cargo planes for transfer to Tehran hospitals.

The operations were hampered by continuing aftershocks. Tehran University’s Geophysics Center reported that 22 of them, some as strong as magnitude 5.5, had occurred in the region in the last 24 hours. The main quake Thursday was measured at a magnitude of 7.3 by Iran, 7.7 by the United States.

During the war with Iraq, the Iranian army’s infamous human wave attacks--sometimes across minefields--created thousands of casualties, not unlike the tide of victims in the natural disaster.

The death toll rose quickly after the earthquake Thursday leveled as many as 340 towns and villages in northern Iran and now stands at an estimated 50,000. Estimates of the numbers of hurt and homeless vary widely but run as high as 200,000 and 500,000, respectively.

“The war with Iraq gave us a good training for the huge numbers of casualties overnight,” noted Dr. Afshin Assadi, a resident surgeon at Tehran’s Khomeini Hospital. “For a surgeon, the war was a great medical experience. Now I am using it with the earthquake victims.”

In Roudbar, lesser injuries are treated at the equivalent of military aid stations lining the main street of the city. Medics were still busy Monday, working with those injured in rescue attempts and re-dressing older quake wounds.

At the Government Health Center, doctors treated a man with a mangled hand on an outdoor table. Around the dirt courtyard of the center, piles of bottled and tablet medicine lay on the ground.

Down near the helicopter field, three mobile Red Crescent clinics--buses, each with 18 litter beds--have handled 200 patients a day since Thursday’s quake. “We’re well-supplied with medicine,” a doctor said, but he looked fatigued from the ordeal.

Many survivors in hard-hit Roudbar stood aimlessly on the main street. Brauner, the West German specialist, said the syndrome is common in disasters with heavy loss of life.

“There is nobody here who has not lost a loved one. Whole families have been shattered, and the survivors have no one to comfort them in their grief,” he explained. “In Armenia (in December, 1988), we saw the quake destroying a culture along with the families and the houses. Families are broken, and the sustaining comfort they give is lost.”

While there is nothing the relief workers can do for these cases, they have had the answers in other areas. The fundamentalist Komiteh in Roudbar has a thriving distribution center for old clothing for the homeless. The Red Crescent Society is supplying shelter with military-style six-person tents.

Foreign relief efforts are concentrated in medical care and the continuing rescue work.

In a country where even international aid to suffering people is a political issue between fundamentalists and moderates, the pragmatist supporters of Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani appear to be winning the day.

Iranian officials said Monday afternoon that 62 aircraft from 26 foreign countries had arrived at Mehrabad International Airport in Tehran since the earthquake struck Thursday morning. There were 11 foreign medical teams, including a 40-person unit from West Germany.

Some of the quake aid comes from the unlikeliest of sources. Author Salman Rushdie, who is living under an Iranian death threat for alleged blasphemy against Islam in his novel, “The Satanic Verses,” is donating $8,650 to a relief fund, the British newspaper The Independent reported.

Y-Care International, a charity started by Terry Waite, the Church of England envoy believed held hostage by a pro-Iranian group in Lebanon, is collecting donations for quake victims.

Even Iraq, Iran’s foe during eight years of war, offered help.

Although fundamentalist newspapers such as Kayhan International and the Jomhuri Islami continued to rail against what they called the “opportunistic” aid offered by the United States, Western diplomats based in Iran said the aid represents a political victory for Rafsanjani.

“By accepting the aid,” said one diplomat, “the Rafsanjani forces are saying they want to be welcomed back into the world community. In this case, at least, he appears to have been more powerful than the fundamentalists.”

The United States sent Iran $291,000 in aid for the earthquake victims as a “humanitarian gesture” but does not expect to reap any political benefits from the decision, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Monday.

But the huge presence of international aid in the earthquake relief effort was overshadowed by the national effort of Iranians coming to the aid of their fellow countrymen and women.

The aid ranged from ordinary citizens driving in their cars and trucks to the disaster site to help dig out victims, to a group of nationally celebrated wrestlers who raised money with charity matches and took it to the devastated villages. Included in the group was the son of the late Iranian wrestling champion Gholamreza Takhti, who became famous for his relief efforts after a destructive 1962 quake in Qazvin.

The official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that 100,000 victims have been pulled alive from the rubble.

Many of the foreign relief workers have set up their operations in Manjil.

Bryan Kirby is team leader for 17 members of the British International Rescue Corps. They are working in tandem with French sniffer dogs and use sophisticated listening equipment in the continuing effort to find live villagers trapped in the rubble of their mountain homes.

Kirby said his team had found several bodies but no survivors. He is not optimistic.

WHERE TO SEND AID

Here are some of the agencies accepting donations for Iranian earthquake victims: Adventist Development and Relief Agency 12501 Old Columbia Pike Silver Spring, Md. 20904 (301) 680-6380 American Jewish World Service 1290 Avenue of the Americas 11th Floor New York, N.Y. 10104 American Network for Service and Relief c/o Muslim Public Affairs Council 3010 Wilshire Blvd., No. 217 Los Angeles, Calif. 90010 (213) 383-3443 American Red Cross Iran Earthquake Disaster P.O. Box 37243 Washington, D.C. 20013 (800) 842-2200 American Red Cross (local) 2700 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, Calif. 90057 AmeriCares 161 Cherry St. New Canaan, Conn. 06840 (800) 486-HELP Bank Melli Iran Iran Quake Relief Assistance Account No. 5000 628 Madison Ave. New York, N.Y. 10022 Bank Melli Iran (local) 818 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, Calif. 90017 Baptist World Alliance Iran Earthquake Fund 6733 Curran St. McLean, Va. 22101 Catholic Relief Services 209 W. Fayette St. Baltimore, Md. 21208 (301) 625-2220 Church World Service Iran Emergency P.O. Box 968 Elkhart, Ind. 46515 (212) 870-3151 Direct Relief International 2801-B De La Vina St. Santa Barbara, Calif. 93105 (805) 687-3694 Iranian-American Jewish Federation 6505 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, Calif. 90048 Lutheran World Relief 390 Park Ave. S. New York, N.Y. 10016 Operation California / USA 7615 1/2 Melrose Ave. Los Angeles, Calif. 90046 (213) 658-8876 U.S. Committee for UNICEF 333 E. 38th St. New York, N.Y. 10016 (212) 686-5522 World Concern P.O. Box 33000 Seattle, Wash. 98133 World Vision 919 W. Huntington Drive Monrovia, Calif. 91016 (818) 357-7979