1988 Spitak Earthquake - Response

Response

Gorbachev set aside 5 billion rubles (about 8 billion U.S. dollars) in funds for a start on what would likely be a recovery cost that would exceed the cleanup bill for the 1986 nuclear and radiation accident in Ukraine. While foreign doctors did assist with the Chernobyl incident, the Soviet relief effort after the earthquake was augmented by the largest foreign cooperation since World War II. That deluge of western aid was a byproduct of the disaster that may have had a positive effect on Soviet Union–United States relations. The cost of rebuilding would be a severe obstacle for Perestroika, Gorbachev's plan for economic restructuring. Another adverse affect of the disaster was that the Armenians were already distrustful of Gorbachev's dismissal of their claims to the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, whom the Armenians had been contesting with neighboring Azerbaijan.

The world responded rapidly to the disaster in Leninakan and Spitak, with much of Europe sending cargo aircraft loaded with medical supplies, rescue equipment, and trained personnel to assist in the recovery, and even more reinforcement came in from Latin America and the Far East. Mikhail Gorbachev was in New York on his first day of visits with Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush at the time of the earthquake, and once the scale of the disaster was realized, a quick departure was made back to Armenia, with the Kremlin formally asking for American help. Washington immediately responded with offers of doctors, medical equipment, and rescue teams, and by the first weekend the first US plane arrived in Yerevan with search and rescue teams and detection dogs.

The French arrived in Armenia in the late evening on Friday, December 9 and relieved the exhausted Armenian workers who then returned to Yerevan. Japan sent a monetary gift of nine million dollars while Italy had plans to build a prefabricated village for the victims, and West Germany offered to send more than a dozen heavy cranes. The Americans donated generously as well, with Washington dispatching eight official planeloads of official relief aid plus a Lockheed C-141 Starlifter from Italy. Private donations from the United States were also significant. Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca arranged for a fund drive, and in Chicago (one of five major Armenian population centers in the US) the community raised $800,000 and donated 20,000 pounds of supplies.

American businessman and philanthropist Armand Hammer, well known to the Soviet Union for his financial pursuits and humanitarian ties, left Los Angeles for Armenia on board a Boeing 727 loaded with 2,300 pounds of medical supplies that were provided by the American Red Cross. Hammer, known for his decades of work with the Occidental Petroleum Corporation, had spoken with Gorbachev prior to leaving and was carrying with him 1 million in relief funds. Half of those funds were from World Vision International, a California-based relief and development umbrella organization, and the other half were his own personal donation. The flight also carried Robert Seiple (president of World Vision) and a UCLA doctor who had worked in the aftermath of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

Red tape inevitably held up some of the rescue efforts and criticism of the perceived flawed processes soon followed. The newspaper Pravda complained that the lack of cranes meant that "seconds and hours are being lost -- that means lives." The paper also stated that too many Soviet personnel were giving advice and not enough people were actually searching. The daily newspaper Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya noted that there were families living out in the open even while there were an abundance of tents available. Health minister Yevgeniy Chazov urged the creation of a governmental body to assist with disaster management. Baxter International, an American health care company with headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois, designed and built a flying medical lab set up with 20 dialysis machines to be used with victims suffering from crush syndrome, but were unable to get started for four days until the visas were available. With the hospitals destroyed, and their limited knowledge of the care requirements, the Soviets were not well-equipped to deal with the cases of crush syndrome (trauma associated with building collapses). Author and professor of geopolitics Pierre Verluise detailed in his 1995 book Armenia in Crisis: The 1988 Earthquake, how a French doctor and director of a Leninakan hospital described that he had seen one hundred victims suffering from the syndrome each day during the first three days. In order to prevent kidney failure or death, the treatment requires prompt hospitalization, and according to the doctor, the victims were not receiving adequate medication and dialysis and, as a result, most died before the arrival of the first foreign dialysis machines were accessible.