A British traveller and former fireman who was killed in the Iran earthquake was given a solemn send-off in Bam on Monday by former colleagues who, in an extraordinary coincidence, were part of the international rescue team combing the devastated city.
Gavin Sexton was returning to Britain from a motorbiking tour of the world when he stopped off in Bam just before the fateful quake early on Friday reduced the city to rubble, killing as many as 30Â 000 people.
Sexton (36), who had given up his 12-year career in the Hampshire fire service in August to go travelling, was at first pronounced missing.
But rescuers found his passport and other documents, and the eight-man team from Hampshire fire brigade, who were sent to Bam at the weekend as part of the international rescue team, were alerted. One of the men was able to identify his remains.
“Stunned, couldn’t believe it, not Gavin! It was numbing, pretty hard to take in,” said Lee Gifford (39), who had worked the same shift as Sexton in Southsea for years.
The two had lost touch but bumped into one another shortly before Sexton’s trip.
“He told me about his plans to travel the world, it was what he’d always wanted to do,” Gifford said on Monday, at the end of a long day hunting for survivors. “He was excited about it, which was typical of him. He was always cheerful, always smiling, a nice guy and a good firefighter.”
Sexton was travelling from Nepal back to Britain by motorbike after a tour of South America, Australia and Asia. He was visiting Bam only because of a problem with his Enfield bike, and had been waylaid for two days at the Akhbar guesthouse when the earthquake struck.
British officials present in Bam to check British casualties informed the Hampshire crew of their former colleague’s death.
“We were stunned. Some of the guys had worked with him for years and he was a good fire officer,” said Peter Crook (47), the leader of the Hampshire contingent, and Sexton’s former instructor. “Suddenly, we were very keen to retrieve the body.”
It was other rescuers who pulled Sexton’s body from the guesthouse ruins, but the Hampshire crew were able to give their colleague a send-off, and retrieve his backpack for his family.
“It had his photos in it, his camera and presents for his family,” said Crook. “He’d also got a map of the world with his route marked on, going through Argentina, Burma, Australia.”
“He’d obviously had a very nice trip, which was a good thing to know.”
Rescue workers began pulling out of the city on Monday night, abandoning hope of finding more survivors, but not before a baby girl was found alive, clinging to her dead mother’s body, after surviving at least a day and a half without food or drink in plummeting temperatures.
Red Crescent officials quoted by Reuters said that the infant, Nassim, had been saved by her mother’s embrace, which protected her from the falling rubble.
Hypothermia and unrest have begun to gnaw away at the thousands sleeping rough on Bam’s cracked streets and rubble-strewn parks. The government has provided food but few tents or blankets and no medicine, many say.
“Children left without parents are getting hypothermia, and there are thousands of people developing serious respiratory problems because of the dust,” said Dr Hamid Sadeghi, who has patrolled Bam’s streets since the main Imam Khomeini hospital was wrecked by the quake.
“We’re told that lots of foreign help has arrived but we haven’t received any of it, no medicines,” he added. “If this continues, the survivors will start dying.”
Soldiers fired submachine gun volleys over a crowd of angry survivors during food distribution in Bam on Monday, the first sign of public unrest since several thousand troops were deployed to the city in the aftermath of the quake.
Looting has been reported by the food convoys arriving at Bam from surrounding cities.
Many in Bam are openly critical of the government’s response to the disaster. Survivors on Monday heard Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vow to restore the shattered city to its former glory, but few were impressed.
“The government is doing nothing for us, only the foreigners, we want a new government, we want elections like in England,” said Ahmed, a civil servant, who lost six relatives in the earthquake. — Guardian Unlimited Â