Gerishna – New Year is a happy time for many, but can turn out sad for some. Part of the delight of this vacation comes from the opportunity to go on a trip; and that is exactly where the roads show their gruesome faces. The unsafe and hazardous roads took three victims from Gerash in about the two weeks around Nowruz.

 It Began with a Cleric

Ismaeili Memoriam

On March 19th, just at the beginning of Nowruz vacation, Hujjat-al-Islam Abolfazl Ismaeili, the former Dean of the Religious Seminary of Gerash for two years, and also the former provisional Friday Prayer Imam of Gerash, was reported dead in a car accident near Najaf-Abad, Isfahan. He was on his to Gerash. Although for the past four years he was no longer in charge of the Seminary, he had never broken his close ties with Gerash and its people. Judging from the two special ceremonies that were held in his memoriam on April 9th and 10th, one can appraise his popularity as an educational cleric in Gerash.

 It Ended with Two Young Men

As though it was not enough to begin with a death, the vacation ended with two other deaths. On one unlucky Wednesday morning, April 4th, in two separate accidents on the roads of the south, two young men were killed and at least three were severely injured.

The first of these occurred at 2 o’clock in the morning, when a Peugeot 206 hit a camel that had wandered off onto the road near Jask, Chabahar. Of the two 30-years-old men in the car, Ahmad Omidi died instantly, and Ja’far Alian received a severe injury on his vertebral column.

Ahmad Omidi 01

In the second accident, at 3:23 a.m., the 26-years-old Hamid Reza Rezania, the driver of a Pride, lost control of the car, probably due to drowsiness, and crashed into an oncoming bus. He was bounced out of the car and died instantly. The other three passengers of his car were injured, at least one of them severely in the vertebral column. The passengers on the bus saw no harm.

Hamid Reza Rezania

 Hope for No More

Police statistics says 444 car crashes have been reported in New Year’s vacation all around Iran, resulting in 74 deaths. Last year in Gerash, 6 people were killed in car or motorcycle accidents. Until now, this number has proved inclined to rise this year, unless some serious reconsideration is made by drivers and motorcycle riders.