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| On Wednesday, December 7, 1988, at 11:41 a.m. local time a magnitude 6.9 on the Richter scale earthquake shook northwestern Armenia and was followed four minutes later by a magnitude 5.8 aftershock. Swarms of aftershocks, some as large as magnitude 5.0, continued for months in the area around Spitak. The earthquakes hit an area 80 km in diameter comprising the towns of Gyumri, Spitak, Stepanavan, and Kirovakan in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. The epicenter of the quake was in the mountain village of Shirokamud, referred to among its inhabitants by its old name Nalband. The village is on the main east-west road between Spitak and the country's second largest city, Gyumri, known in Soviet times as Leninakan. |
| The deaths and damage that the December 1988 earthquake caused made it the largest earthquake disaster since the 1976 magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Tangshan, China that killed more than 240,000 people |
| The Town of Spitak (population 25,000) was nearly leveled and more than half of the structures in the City of Gyumri, (population 250,000) were damaged or destroyed. Damage also occurred in Stepanavan and Kirovakan and other smaller cities. Direct economic losses were put at $14.2 billion (U.S.) at the United Nations official exchange rate. 25,000 were killed and the earthquake injured 15,000. In addition 517,000 people were made homeless. However, 15,000 people were rescued. Most of these rescues were made within the first few hours following the disaster. The mayor of Shirokamud, Albert Papoyan, still finds it difficult to recount what happened |
| "The earthquake's epicenter was right here at the train station, the entire community was destroyed, totally, nothing was left standing: the sovkhoz, the enterprises, the schools, were all gone, 320 residents were killed in the quake, including 112 in the middle school.... fires broke out burning up bodies -- it's a sad story I cannot characterize in detail... that many families were left without breadwinners, without parents, and 85 residents became invalids." Papoyan says, "the whole Soviet Union, the whole world descended on the quake zone." Construction workers from Krasnodar were dispatched to Nalband to rebuild the village along with Russian, Italian, French, German, and Czech rescue workers and builders. It was decided that the original appearance and layout of the village should be restored. Currently, some 350 families are still without a proper roof over their heads, are still waiting for homes to be constructed for them and are still living in containers, wagons or shacks. A few who had enough money built their own homes. But most residents lacked the funds. The mayor says the war over Nagorno-Karabakh, in addition to the after-effects of the break-up of the Soviet Union, and other economic problems contributed to the delay in reconstruction by siphoning off funding. "We 'Shirokamudtsi' are very patient people and we will endure until the situation in the republic returns to normal." A 78-year-old ethnic Mengrelian woman, Lena Morgoshia, better known to residents as Baba Lena inhabits the last house in the village, completed three years ago. She says she was in Spitak when the quake struck and ran the eight kilometers back to Shirokamud. "People were screaming, 'help, help', but I did not know what to do, whom to help. I just wanted to get home to see where my family was. |
| I thought they were at work. But that day my two grandsons were at home watching television and both remained in the rubble. Their mother was at a neighbor's house and suffered a broken leg. She was taken to hospital in Yerevan and never heard from again", Baba Lena, noting that she lost 12 members of her family in the earthquake including her daughter, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and sons-in-law. "Of my blood relatives, 12 died -- grandchildren, great-grandchildren, sons in law, a daughter, that was all here -- but the Abkhazians over there (in Georgia) killed 49 of my kin in Sukhimi, Zugdidi and in our village." The larger town of Spitak presents an orderly appearance although the earthquake destroyed some 5,100 buildings. The quake killed 4,003 of Spitak's 18,500 inhabitants or over 21 percent of the population. Since the quake, some 1,400 buildings have been erected and Spitak is now home to 3,000 more inhabitants than before the quake, thanks to a high post-quake birthrate and the arrival of 3,500 refugees, largely from Azerbaijan. The center of the town, once consisting of some 30 five-story buildings is now a conglomeration of building sites and shops housed in metal shipping containers. |
| Dear friends, this is a little part of our Armenian history. I know it’s sadly but let’s till we’re alive don’t forget about it and try to behave better each other … Let’s make the World better place for living with our positive minds and actions. Remember - a young boy and a girl will never whisper "I am in love with you, my dear “… therefor now we must love twice. Let us all tomorrow - become closer friends! Let us all become brothers on the Earth - and THE EARTH WILL LOVE US! … |
| THE HISTORY |
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