NCRI – Natural Disasters: Iranian Regime’s Latest Crisis Severe storms and the lack of a forecast by the National Weather Service terrorized and surprised people again in Tehran on Monday, April 24, 2017. A strong dust storm with wind speeds of 100 km/h caused lots of debris, broke tree branches, threw heavy objects off roofs, and even pulled stones off the building facades, which caused them to crash into the streets and alleys.
No pre-announcements of stormy weather were given by the regime’s Meteorological Organization, which angered people in Tehran, and that caused people to question why these vast and long organizations, such as the meteorological and others involved in these organizations, couldn’t at least inform the public of the possibility of a storm through the regime’s radio, television, and other public media. With such warnings provided, people would at least have the opportunity to prepare and damage could have potentially been avoided or reduced.
The people are right to question a regime that leaves them defenseless to natural disasters and other events, such as hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and fires (including the fire in Plasco’s building), especially when they lack even the basic tools needed to handle these accidents and natural events.
Only in the final months of 2016, after injuries, accidents and environmental crises, such as the cutting off of water and electricity due to heavy dust storms, flooding, the desiccation of Plasco’s building, had generated a huge number of injuries and enormous social damages for people that Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, mayor of Tehran, in an interview with ISNA News Agency on February 7, 2017 was forced to admit, “We have serious problems in the area of disaster management and we should admit that disaster management itself is in crisis. We are faced with underworked staff and ineffective structures in many of the public work administrative areas. Only 1.2% of budget is spent for disaster prevention, and we are faced with plenty of difficulties. We should see where money has gone and where this budget has been spent.”
In another confession, the director general of public relations for Red Crescent said in an interview with the regime’s television, “Our equipment is falling apart and our share from an 1100 Milliard budget was only 100 Milliard for past two years.” One of the regime’s MPs on Sunday, March 28, 2017, said: “The flood incidents in a number of southern and western provinces of Iran, demonstrates well the crisis of Disaster mismanagement… We are mainly faced with disaster mismanagement in the country, because in many cases, we do not correctly forecast these events.”
Analyses of recent natural disasters in the media and the regime’s confessions:
– State controlled News Agency ISNA reported that according to the Federation of Red Cross: “Iran’s population has always been approximately 1% of the world population, but unfortunately, its casualties due to earthquakes and other natural incidents have been 6% of the global total.”
– Government owned Newspaper Siasat wrote a report on April 14, 2017, titled: “Iran’s flood took the dream to win the election”, about the regions in the northwest of the country affected by floods and their destruction. The media and supporters of the government only think about the elections, and once again the government failed to manage the crisis. The same source has added: “According to existing reports, the share of the Disaster Management budget is 5% of a total budgetary allocation, which was 15000 Milliard. This number is the budget that this organization has received for several years, but the level of preparedness of this organization was minimal and the prevention measures taken have been inefficient. The same inefficient management attitude has elevated to a point in the country’s crises that any incident will result in the loss of lives and properties. However, we haven’t learned our lessons and the sad stories repeat themselves.”
– Government owned Newspaper of Daily News wrote a report titled “Roaring Flood and Maze of Disaster Management Crises” on April 23, 2017. While confessing to inefficiencies, the report pointed out that climate experts are estimating yearly flood damage to the urban and rural infrastructures in Iran at about 40 trillion. The authors write, “What caused the extensive damage in the recent flood in Azerbaijan was a lack of proper flood management, planning of urbanized areas, and improper planning of floodplains, which could have prevented the damage with thoughtful urban planning.”
