Leninakan earthquake

Earthquake

Also known as: The Spitak earthquake

Date: December 7, 1988

Place: Armenia, then part of the Soviet Union

Magnitude: 6.9 and 5.8

Result: More than 60,000 dead, 15,000 injured, 500,000 homeless, at least 450,000 buildings destroyed, including 7,600 historical monuments, estimated $30 billion in damage

On December 7, 1988, devastation struck Soviet Armenia. Between 11:41 and 11:45 a.m. two tremors measuring 6.9 and 5.8 on the Richter scale destroyed or severely damaged the cities of Spitak, Leninakan (now Gyumri), Kirovakan (now Vanadzor), and Stepanakert and more than 100 villages. Erivan (now Yerevan), the capital, suffered damage, and the shock waves spread out some 150 miles into neighboring Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Iran. The quakes were shallow, the most destructive kind. The point on the fault between two massive subterranean tectonic plates where enough pressure was exerted to create the focus of the earthquake was approximately 13 miles below the surface. The corresponding mark of the focus on the surface of the earth, the epicenter, was about 20 miles northwest of Kirovakan, 26 miles northeast of Leninakan, and 3.25 miles from Spitak, a city of 30,000 that was virtually erased from the face of the earth. Approximately 99 percent of its population vanished, buried under the rubble. About 80 percent of Leninakan, Armenia’s second largest city, with a population of 290,000, was destroyed; 80 percent of Stepanakert, a city of 16,000, was destroyed.

The quakes occurred at the worst possible time, just before noon on a working weekday. In addition, the damaged or destroyed areas had more than 150,000 unregistered refugees from neighboring Nagorno-Karabakh, a small, predominantly Armenian province in Azerbaijan that was forcibly attempting to oust the Armenians. The quakes caused a rupture 8 miles long and 2 feet wide; the force of the subterranean shock could be compared to the explosion of 100 nuclear bombs.

Devastating as the quakes were, in intensity they were relatively mild. In comparison, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake registered 8.1 on the Richter scale, the 1964 Alaskan earthquake was 9.2, and the 1939 Chile quake was 8.3. On the Richter scale, a magnitude 7.0 quake is ten times more powerful than a magnitude 6.0 quake and one hundred times more powerful than a magnitude 5.0 quake. Although all of these earthquakes were of greater intensity than that of Armenia, none were as costly in terms of human life. What set the Armenian earthquakes apart is the large number of buildings the quakes either damaged or destroyed.

Reasons for the Scope of the Destruction. The first reason was the nature of the quakes. Usually, major earthquakes are preceded by a series of foreshocks, mild tremors that give authorities time to prepare and potential victims time to seek safety. The Armenian quakes came without warning, although some people had noted beforehand peculiar animal and bird behavior. The two tremors were of about equal intensity. This meant that whereas the first tremor badly damaged buildings, the second, or aftershock, four minutes later, caused them to collapse, often on their occupants.

Soviet seismologists defended their lack of preparedness, maintaining that there had been no major earthquake in the area since 1046, when the ancient Armenian capital of Arni was destroyed by a quake. However, the area had experienced a series of quakes over the years. In 1667, a quake had taken 80,000 lives. The fault at the heart of the 1988 earthquake appears on a geological map dated 1971. The Caucasus Mountain range, in which Armenia is located, is a seismic area crisscrossed by fault lines and filled with extinct volcanoes. Soviet scientists were known to have acknowledged that a major quake in the area was long overdue.

A second reason was poor urban planning. In earthquake-prone areas provisions should be made for “areas of survival,” or free space to which people can escape from the danger of collapsing buildings. There was no such provision in the Armenian cities. Buildings were placed close together so that the areas between them, including the streets, were filled with debris from the earthquakes. This not only failed to afford escape but also did not provide the firm, cleared ground the Caterpillar carriages of the moveable cranes needed to lift the heavy debris.

Inappropriate building design and faulty construction also contributed greatly. Substandard construction was probably the major reason for the scope of the Armenian catastrophe. Most of the newer buildings, both offices and apartment houses, eight or nine stories high, were prefabricated. Slabs of concrete rested on cement-block walls. When the quakes occurred, the unconnected elements toppled. The quality of the concrete was also inferior, unable to withstand strain and prone to crumbling. When the supports were destroyed, the slabs collapsed together like gigantic millstones, trapping many of the occupants of the buildings between them. After the quakes, lifting these huge slabs was beyond human efforts; the much-needed cranes and other heavy equipment arrived too late to save many victims. In rural areas, many of the houses were made of mud brick, with stone roofs that collapsed on the occupants. In rebuilding the decision was made to limit the height of buildings to three or five stories and to pour concrete on the site.

Another reason was ineffective assistance. The sheer scope of the tragedy, involving nearly 19 percent of the country’s population, was beyond the capability of the Armenian authorities; help was needed from outside the country. With thousands of badly injured people trapped beneath the wreckage, every hour of delay meant additional loss of life. It was only because of glasnost, or the open-discussion policy of Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, that the outside world became aware of the disaster. (The 1948 earthquake in the Soviet republic of Turkmen that killed 110,000 was concealed for forty years.) Also, Soviet acceptance of outside help was unprecedented.

When the outside world did become aware of the disaster, the extent of the support, especially from the 6 million Armenians scattered throughout the world, was unparalleled. The total value of aid, estimated at $500 million, was the largest international response ever to a national disaster. The day after the quakes a French team of doctors, anesthesiologists, and medical technicians—together with supplies—was ready to leave for Erivan. However, they had to wait two days before permission was given to land—two days in which thousands died. President Gorbachev was in New York at the time but canceled his trip to fly back to the Soviet Union. He visited Armenia on December 10, ostensibly to take charge of the rescue operation, which had suffered from lack of leadership. The position of landlocked Armenia surrounded by alienated states made a desperate situation even worse because the necessary heavy equipment had to come by land. The only working rail line was from Erivan to Baku, the capital of Armenia-hostile Azerbaijan. Supplies came by air in such quantities that the Erivan and Leninakan airports became bottlenecks.

Meanwhile, aid workers desperately tried to free the victims whose cries and groans became ever fainter. In the end only 5,000 of as many as 80,000 were pulled from the wreckage. Most tragic was the death of more than 15,000 children, particularly in a country with a negative growth rate. By December 14, the Red Army wanted to clear all people from the damaged areas and to level the sites with bulldozers and sow them with lime and other disinfectants to halt the possible spread of disease from the decomposing bodies beneath the ruins. Desperate intervention by survivors still searching for possible living victims delayed the decision a few more days. As late as December 15, a living person was pulled from the wreckage. By December 17, foreign relief workers were ordered to leave; by December 23, efforts to locate more survivors ceased.

The injured who did survive faced another ordeal: inferior medical treatment. Relief doctors estimated Soviet medicine lagged a half-century behind that of the West. Not only were basic medications either in short supply or lacking but there was also a lack of sophisticated equipment, such as dialysis machines. One of the more urgent problems was to deal with “crush syndrome.” When subjected to great external pressure, the kidneys shut down and toxemia or poisoning begins. Only the use of dialysis machines that serve to cleanse the blood can keep the victim alive. At Erivan’s central hospital, 80 percent of the 600 survivors suffered from crush syndrome. Several dialysis machines were brought in by air, but not enough to save all who needed their use.

There were also psychological problems to solve. In a society such as Armenia’s, where the extended family and clan take precedence over the individual, the loss of such support is emotionally devastating. There was scarcely a person in the entire republic that had not lost a relative; entire families disappeared. Hundreds wandered aimlessly with blank eyes through the ruins, clearly in need of counseling or psychiatric services, which were not readily available.

The poor health of the victims was a factor in the death rate. Relief workers, especially those trained in nutrition, noted that low resistance caused by poor dietary habits raised the mortality rate among the earthquake victims. Further undermining their health was frequent evidence of alcohol and tobacco abuse.

Lack of authority was also to blame. Despite its officially being called a “union” of quasi-independent republics, the Soviet Union was a dictatorship, with authority tightly controlled by Moscow. Despite Gorbachev’s pledge to “take charge” in Armenia, centralized authority to direct the complicated relief operation, especially in the distribution of supplies, was sporadic and ineffective. Relief workers often did not know where to go or what to do, and there was much duplication of effort and plundering and disappearance of supplies. A number of the bureaucrats who normally would have been available for administrative duties lay dead beneath the rubble. Units of the Red Army that had been sent to the disaster area did not participate in the relief efforts; they merely enforced curfews and blocked access to the ruined sites.

Assessing the Damage. Given the secretive nature of the Soviet system it was impossible to arrive at accurate figures for the cost of the earthquakes. The Soviets estimated that 55,000 people had been killed. Relief workers estimated far more—possibly as many as three times that number. Especially devastating to Armenia was the loss of trained professionals and of children—a loss impossible to evaluate in monetary terms.

More than 500,000 were left homeless; Soviet authorities indicated a wish to resettle about 70,000 in other parts of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev pledged $8.5 billion for restoration purposes, the same amount of money that was allocated to repair the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl two years before. Authorities estimated that at least triple that amount would be needed to restore the cities, using earthquake-resistant and more expensive building techniques. In addition to the buildings, extensive damage was done to the infrastructure—to light, sewer, water, and gas lines and to the transportation system.

Help from Moscow never arrived. The Soviet Union was dissolved December 4, 1991. Armenia had declared its independence on September 21, 1991, to face the formidable task of rebuilding a shattered land.

Bibliography

Brand, D. “When the Earth Shook.” Time, December 19, 1988, 34-36.

Coleman, Fred. “A Land of the Dead.” Newsweek, December 19, 1988, 19-23.

Kerr, Richard A. “How the Armenian Quake Became a Killer.” Science 243 (January 13, 1989): 170-171.

Novosti Press Agency. The Armenian Earthquake Disaster. Translated by Elliott B. Urdang. Madison, Conn.: Sphinx Press, 1989.

Verluise, Pierre. Armenia in Crisis: The 1988 Earthquake. Translated by Levon Chorbajian. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995.