Word: spitak
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Dates: during 1988-1988
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Early last week ten people were discovered beneath the rubble of Spitak, including an infant still sucking on her pacifier. One of the rescuers, a nursing mother, quickly put the child to her breast. It seemed likely that these would be the last of the estimated 7,000 survivors who have been pulled from the wreckage. "With every day the moans are decreasing," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov. By Friday the French, British, West German and Italian teams had given up the search and returned home and the official American relief team was packing away its equipment...
...that decision provoked an outcry from Armenians, who insisted on picking through the rubble until all their loved ones could be accounted for. On Friday Moscow suddenly reversed itself after dogged rescuers miraculously pulled out of the debris 21 more people, one in Spitak and the rest in Leninakan, who by then had been buried alive for more than a week. Said - Armenian official Eduard Aikazian: "We will continue looking for survivors until there isn't the slightest possibility of finding anybody...
...charge of what was left of Spitak last week was the local party leader, Norik Moradanyan, who lost eleven relatives in the disaster. He had no time for grief, working round the clock to resolve disputes over where to send cranes, advising people on how to seek missing family members, or barking out orders for feeding and clothing survivors. Numb with fatigue, he had no idea how many people in his area had died: "We have pulled 7,000 out of the rubble. Many were still alive." Many died instantly, said Dr. Robert Gale, who was also present...
Dazed survivors of Spitak last week began trying to rebuild their lives from what remained of the town: piles of stone and wood and shattered belongings. Men, their faces hairy with a week's growth of beard, aimlessly wandered streets littered with scraps of clothing, pieces of furniture and broken dishes. Women with colorful head scarves plodded along, carrying heavy bundles of clothing salvaged from the wreckage; some carried buckets of water from distribution trucks. Most people lived in military tents, but Manuel Lambaryan and seven friends stayed in a makeshift hut built from the beams of his crumpled house...
Last Friday a green loudspeaker truck patrolled Spitak, urging all women and children to leave the town. In clipped Armenian, the voice assured residents that they would be sent to trade-union vacation centers in Georgia and the Crimea. Officials said about 38,000 people had been evacuated from the entire earthquake-damaged region and up to 70,000 were expected to leave. But many women in Spitak and other devastated communities refused to go, preferring to keep vigil by the still entombed bodies of their loved ones. "Why should we leave?" asked an elderly woman in Spitak. "This...