1988 Spitak Earthquake - Aftermath

Aftermath

Avant-garde musician Pierre Schaeffer led a 498-member French rescue team to look for survivors in Leninakan, and worked there until all foreign personnel were asked to leave after the plan to bulldoze what was left of the ruins was formulated. The total number of volunteer rescue personnel in Leninakan totalled 2,000, with teams from Austria, Switzerland, and Yugoslavia, plus forty firefighters and paramedics from Fairfax County, Virginia and Miami-Dade County, Florida in the United States. Nikolai Ryzhkov, the then Chairman of the Council of Ministers, was awarded the National Hero of Armenia for his work in rebuilding the city following the earthquake.

Seventy-eight people were killed while on a relief mission to Leninakan when a Soviet Ilyushin Il-76 crashed on approach to the airport there. Nine crew and 69 military personnel were on board the plane that struck a helicopter in foggy conditions at the small airport that was overrun with rescue flights. In the days following the earthquake, the normally quiet airstrip was receiving up to 180 flights per day carrying food, medical supplies, and disaster management experts. Those who were killed on the plane were planning to join an estimated 20,000 soldiers and 85,000 civil defense workers in rescue efforts by searching for survivors, supplying food and water, and setting up sanitation facilities in the region. At the Yerevan airport, western pilots reported a breakdown in air traffic control communications, with flight controllers not delivering the necessary flight navigation instructions, allowing for a critical lack of separation as foreign planes made their made their way into the area.

A second air transport incident occurred the following day at Yerevan (capital of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic) when an Antonov An-12 from Yugoslavia crashed killing all seven crew on board. The crash was blamed on the pilots' failure to properly adjust the altimeter following a miscommunication with the air traffic controllers.

A group of French recording artists and actors came together with the French writer and composer Charles Aznavour to record the 1989 song "Pour toi Arménie" (For you Armenia). Aznavour, together with Armenian-French composer Georges Garvarentz, formed a foundation called "Aznavour for Armenia" and composed the song as a call for help for the Armenians. It took six weeks from the creation of the song to completion of the disc and with almost two million copies sold, the foundation was able to build 47 schools and three orphanages for the victims of the disaster. Rock Aid Armenia, also known in earlier stages as Live Aid Armenia, was a humanitarian effort by the British music industry to raise money to help those affected by the earthquake. A monument, Armenian Earthquake, expressing the appreciation of the Armenian people for assistance from the U.S. was erected in Washington D.C. in 1990.