in our prayers

An earthquake along the Kurdistan/Iran border area has killed several hundred people in Iran. link2

More HERE. highlights another problem: it is winter, and it gets cold in these higher elevations.

and then there is this.

As aftershocks continue to rattle the country, Iran has shut down one of its main gas plants in the west for safety concerns. "This is another problem," said our correspondent. "This is an area that gets very, very cold at night, so that is going to have an impact on people's heating and their ability to cook food. So, a lot of misery is still to come."

this sounds like they use LPG to cook (as we do here in the Philippines: the alternative is wood, which produces smoke and causes deforestation).

But the problem with heating homes with gas has been an ongoing problem in Iran, which also imports a lot of gas from nearby countries. And is one reason that they are persuing nuclear power to generate electricity.