Earthly Terror

Once a conical chimney of belching fire and fury, the great peak of Iran's Mt. Demavend, towering 18,600 ft. high in the Elburz range north of Teheran, has long reigned in quiet white dignity. But hidden deep beneath Demavend's base, primeval subterranean fires still rage. In a few minutes, one day last week, in a gargantuan effort to adjust to the fury deep within the earth, a vast arc of the earth's crust, curving out some 250 miles on either side of Mt. Demavend, shuddered and heaved in a mighty earthquake that laid waste more than 100 Iranian villages in an area covering 50,000 square miles. Communications were cut; the area's network of irrigation canals became blocked; sliding earth made roads impassable. In two ruined villages alone, rescue workers making their way perilously afoot and on horseback found more than 400 bodies.

Vacationing in Switzerland with his Queen Soraya, Iran's Shah cabled orders for all-out relief measures as reports trickled out of the devastated area describing the plight of rural survivors, whose perils included not only thirst, disease and famine, but packs of hungry, maddened wolves. The bodies of more than 2,000 Iranians have already been recovered, and aid teams have yet to reach most of the stricken area.

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