{"title":"Early casualty estimates and medical help management after the M7.3 Kermanshah earthquake of November 12, 2017 in Iran.","authors":"Amir Mansour Farahbod, Max Wyss","doi":"10.5055/ajdm.2021.0386","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Medical responses to fatal earthquakes have to be rapid to save lives. Here we report the QLARM alert that was issued less than an hour after the magnitude 7.3 Kermanshah, Iran, earthquake of 2017 and the following medical response. The near-real-time estimates of fatalities were 520, on average, and it took official and news reports about 2 days to settle on a minimum of 630 fatalities as a final count. The response of various Iranian agencies was rapid and effective, facilitated by the relatively small area of the disaster (radius of about 50 km). Although this disaster was not large enough to require international first responders to rush to the scene, it is clear that in very large earthquake disasters, a fast, accurately informed response saves lives. For international teams to be of optimal use, the locations and functionality levels of health facilities should be known. This information could be included in the earthquake alerts, but the necessary worldwide data on hospitals are currently not available.</p>","PeriodicalId":40040,"journal":{"name":"American journal of disaster medicine","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"3","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"American journal of disaster medicine","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5055/ajdm.2021.0386","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Medicine","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 3
Abstract
Medical responses to fatal earthquakes have to be rapid to save lives. Here we report the QLARM alert that was issued less than an hour after the magnitude 7.3 Kermanshah, Iran, earthquake of 2017 and the following medical response. The near-real-time estimates of fatalities were 520, on average, and it took official and news reports about 2 days to settle on a minimum of 630 fatalities as a final count. The response of various Iranian agencies was rapid and effective, facilitated by the relatively small area of the disaster (radius of about 50 km). Although this disaster was not large enough to require international first responders to rush to the scene, it is clear that in very large earthquake disasters, a fast, accurately informed response saves lives. For international teams to be of optimal use, the locations and functionality levels of health facilities should be known. This information could be included in the earthquake alerts, but the necessary worldwide data on hospitals are currently not available.
期刊介绍:
With the publication of the American Journal of Disaster Medicine, for the first time, comes real guidance in this new medical specialty from the country"s foremost experts in areas most physicians and medical professionals have never seen…a deadly cocktail of catastrophic events like blast wounds and post explosion injuries, biological weapons contamination and mass physical and psychological trauma that comes in the wake of natural disasters and disease outbreak. The journal has one goal: to provide physicians and medical professionals the essential informational tools they need as they seek to combine emergency medical and trauma skills with crisis management and new forms of triage.