DISASTER IN SOVIET ARMENIA : ‘Searching With Just Hands’ : Eyewitness Tells of Rescue Effort in Ravaged City

“One of the first things I saw was a taxi with a body strapped to the top,” photographer Andrei Gorelovsky said Saturday upon his return from the earthquake-ravaged Armenian city of Leninakan. “You see many such cars--there is a shortage of coffins.”

There were other bodies, said the photographer for the Evening Moscow newspaper. They were lying unclaimed on the rubble-strewn streets, “and no one knows who they are.”

Yet, amid the devastation in Armenia’s second-largest city, which was about 80% destroyed in Wednesday’s earthquake, there were signs of normalcy, he said. The buses were running, and there were ample supplies of food and cooking equipment.

“I personally did not hear the groans of people still under the rubble because there was too much noise,” he said. “There was the noise of tractors and trucks moving rubble, searching for people, women crying, people shouting.

“There were many people searching for survivors without any special equipment, just their hands. I am not an expert, but I think there was not enough specialized rescue equipment. There is a French team with dogs and other equipment that is supposed to arrive today (Saturday) and they should be able to help.

Fear of Another Quake

“There are thousands of people living on the streets. Even the people whose homes were not destroyed are outside because they are afraid of the quake that will follow. I did not feel any tremors while I was there.

“They live on the streets; at night they sleep there. It’s not really that cold, it’s about 12 degrees Centigrade (53 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day. They have pulled wood- and coal-burning stoves out of their houses, and they can cook quite well on them.

“Water has been brought in and people stand in line for it. But I think if it is used rationally, it will be enough. There is also a supply of milk.

“There is lots of food, all the cars with relatives coming from Yerevan to Leninakan bring bread, chicken and mineral water. There is not a food problem. There is gasoline, but they line up for it.

“People can leave Leninakan if they want. There are buses taking people out of the city. But it seems to me most of the traffic is going in the other direction--relatives from Yerevan rushing to Leninakan.

Stalled in Traffic

“I saw cars full of people, entire families including children, driving to Leninakan. We were stalled in traffic by all these cars--it took us four hours to make the 120-kilometer (72-mile) drive.

“I spoke to some people who have suffered a strong psychological shock and they are unable to work. It is difficult to imagine, thousands of people dying in one day. Many other people who could leave are staying to help with the rescue operations.

“Many children died. They were all in school. A lot of people died when the main shopping center was destroyed.”

Referring to Armenia’s dispute with neighboring Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, he said: “You know it was the first day people had stopped striking over Nagorno-Karabakh and they had gone back to work, the kindergartens and schools were open.

“The modern buildings all collapsed. Whoever designed them did not take a quake of this strength into consideration. The older buildings were better preserved. The old medieval church--half of it is standing untouched and the other half is destroyed.

“I have not been to Spitak,” he said, referring to a town said to be the worst hit. “But I heard that most of the children were killed there because they were all in a modern school building that collapsed.

“There are a lot of doctors. First aid is being given in tents. But the airport is only 5 kilometers (3 miles) away and it was only partly damaged by the quake. They are taking the seriously injured out from there by plane and helicopter.”

Report by BBC Journalist

A Western journalist, Jane Howard of the British Broadcasting Corp., had another view of the stricken city. She made her way to the northeast Turkish town of Kars, 40 miles from Leninakan.

Looking at Leninakan from the border, “all you can see is a sort of hazy mist, almost a cloud . . . rising from the rubble and ruins of the town,” she told the BBC in London. “The earthquake really does seem to have changed the whole landscape of the area.

“I was there when dusk fell on Friday, and whereas last week you would have been able to see bright lights from street lights and security points along the border, there was only a very faint glow there last night,” she said.