6 Students Hurt in School Building Collapse

Six students were injured when the walls of an old primary school building in Sadat Abad village located in Semirom County, Isfahan Province, collapsed and the children were trapped under the debris. The incident occurred at 12:40 pm on Wednesday when the children were playing in the school yard.

As the result, four seven-year-old boys and two girls aged nine and seven, sustained injuries. They were first shifted to a medical center in the village and later to the Seyedolshohada Hospital in Semirom for treatment of head and leg injuries. Thanks to timely care, the children are in good health, salamatnews.com reported.

The website said up until reporting time the Semirom education office had not responded to the incident.

In September, a five year-old girl lost her life and three other children were injured while playing in an old school building in Chabahar in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan Province.

Lack of renovation and retrofits of old school buildings in rural areas, as well as natural calamities like earthquakes, often pose danger to students’ lives.

Ali Mohammad Yarahmadi, head of the Education Office in Dorud County, Lorestan Province, had recently pointed out that most of the 20 schools in the county that were damaged in the 6.1-magnitude earthquake that occurred in 2006, had not been renovated yet.

 “Leaking roofs are a common problem in schools, particularly during autumn and winter. As the county is prone to frequent quakes, the risk of school buildings collapsing is also high,” he added.

  30% of School Buildings Old

According to the Organization for Development, Renovation and Equipping Schools, currently 30% of the buildings are old and in dire need of renovation.

In the last Iranian year that ended in March, 28,000 billion rials ($770 million) was allocated for the renovation, maintenance, equipping and standardization of schools.

At present there are 559,243 classrooms in the country of which 1,360 are mud-made and unsafe.

Earlier, Alireza Rashki, head of Sistan-Baluchestan Office for Development, Renovation and Equipping Schools, said $50 million (2,000 billion rials) is needed “to rebuild the unsafe classrooms.”