Earthquake in Iran, at Least 25,000 Dead
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Now to Iran and the massive natural disaster that has apparently left at least 25,000 people dead. CNN's Ryan Chilcote is in the Iranian city of Bam, where the main concern now is caring for the desperate survivors.</s>RYAN CHILCOTE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Carol, it is truly an astounding figure -- that death toll of 25,000. That's according to an Iranian official, who said that is the number of bodies that they have already pulled out from underneath the rubble. He also said that most of those people have been buried. Now, I was out at one of the mass graves on the outskirts of the city a short while ago. People are still being buried there, almost assembly-line style. You have bulldozers digging those graves, and people being buried in the dozens every hour. Carol, there are aid workers from around the world here, including a U.S. team that arrived earlier in the day. This is perhaps a watershed moment in U.S.-Iranian relations. It's the first time that the U.S. has sent a delegation to this country in more than two decades. That team is some 80-strong and will include an assessment team, a group of individuals that will assess the humanitarian need of the people of Bam. And those needs are great, because despite the fact that they did pull some three people, including a 14-year-old girl, out of the rubble yesterday, they have not pulled anyone out today. And officials say that it is unlikely that they will find more people under the rubble alive. According to the U.N. official who is coordinating this international relief effort, the real issue, the emerging story here now is the growing threat of a humanitarian crisis. And first and foremost, the concern here is that disease could spread from the decomposing bodies that have not been buried yet. Another concern, of course, is that the fact that there is almost no housing in this city of 200,000. It was almost entirely destroyed. There is also very little electricity and very little water -- Carol.</s>LIN: So, given that, Ryan, you touched on the fact that humanitarian aid is just beginning to arrive. Thousands of people, obviously, are out in the cold with nothing. How is word getting out that help is on the way? And how are people receiving the supplies? Is there any problem at all with coordination on the ground with all the chaos there?</s>CHILCOTE: Actually the aid effort appears, at least from my viewpoint, to be quite coordinated and quite efficient. The aid workers have divided the city up into six different zones. Different countries get different zones, so they don't intersect with one another. People are getting tents, they're getting water and they're getting food stuffs, but that doesn't solve the really big problem here, which is housing. Almost all of the housing, as I said, was destroyed. And that's going to require a much more concerted, a much more long-term effort to either rebuild this city, which would be a massive project, or move all of the people to another city, where housing would be waiting for them. That is going to be the real need here in the long term -- Carol.</s>LIN: All right, thank you very much, Ryan Chilcote, reporting live from the ancient city of Bam of the devastation there. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.