Fatality Rate Is 90% in Spitak : Rubble and Corpses Left in City Erased by Quake

Campfires fueled by broken furniture and window frames illuminate the grief-stricken, soot-stained faces of Armenians digging through the debris left by the earthquake that reduced this city to a pile of concrete and corpses.

The odors of cremated bodies and those decomposing under the debris mingle in the dust-clouded air, an acrid reminder of the disaster estimated to have killed 90% of Spitak’s population of 20,000 people.

There is no electricity or water or communication with the outside world, and there’s little hope of finding more survivors among the tumbled building blocks of prefabricated nine-story apartments.

Soviet television commentators said last week that Spitak, ringed by the Caucasus foothills, “was practically erased from the face of the Earth” by Wednesday’s earthquake. Half of the housing has been leveled and what’s left standing is unfit for habitation.

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, were shown on Soviet TV visiting Spitak over the weekend, consoling survivors of the earthquake that hit northwestern Armenia, killing tens of thousands and leaving half a million homeless. Only a handful of Western correspondents have been allowed to visit the area.

In Spitak’s central sports field where parents used to cheer their children’s soccer teams, the only sound is the wail of mourners who have come to identify the dead.

Armenians still bearing the shock of the disaster on their faces carefully lift the blankets covering each body, passing on to the next or shrieking in horrible recognition of a loved one.

In another corner of the city, orderly stacks of gray-painted coffins await the continuing stream of bodies pulled from the ruined housing.

Battered trucks and buses have been shuttling coffins, stretchers, food and water to this and other stricken areas, clogging the rutted mountain roads throughout much of the tiny Armenian republic of 3.3 million.

“What is God doing to us? Does he want the entire Armenian nation to perish?” asked Lev Akopian, who drove a carload of traditional flat bread and fuel into Spitak over the weekend. The Armenian now lives in neighboring Georgia and said he had no relatives in the earthquake area, but he wanted to “show solidarity with the Armenian people.”

Thousands of Armenian volunteers, Soviet army recruits, doctors and nurses, as well as a global collection of search and rescue workers, have been combing the debris for signs of life.

Fiber-Optic Sensors

Aeroflot helicopters hover overhead, carrying British rescuers armed with new fiber-optic equipment capable of detecting life from hundreds of feet away, even under mounds of concrete.

Orange-clad West German Red Cross volunteers follow their search dogs, telling the exhausted Soviets where they should dig first. They work around the clock, aided by the campfires after dark.

The volunteers had a moment of joy Sunday when a 33-year-old man was found alive after more than four days under a collapsed, three-story building.

Hundreds of onlookers stood on the rubble as rescuer Peter Schaefer of Hamburg slowly extracted the survivor. He said his name was Ruben as he was carried away on a stretcher, with jubilant Armenians feeding him water and pressing a cigarette into his trembling hand.

Reflecting the chaos in Spitak, there was no ambulance to take him to a makeshift hospital outside the city center. After a few frantic minutes, the rescuers commandeered the van used to transport the West German search dogs.

The scene kindled little hope in despairing relatives like Gegush Aganyan, a 50-year-old woman who stood a tearful vigil by her son’s wrecked apartment. She came from a mountain village in hopes her son, Tateus, and his pregnant wife had somehow survived.

“It was to be my first grandchild,” she said. “But I think there is no chance for them to be found alive.”

Other searchers reported miraculous tales of survival amid the more common discoveries of entombed families.

“We still have hope, although not much,” said Artur Tovmasyan, a volunteer directing the cranes lifting concrete slabs and corrugated metal roofing. He said he had helped dig out 12 survivors in the past three days.

A list of fewer than 2,000 survivors has been written on green sheets of paper at a shack marked with a hand-lettered sign: “Regional Communist Party.” Hundreds clamor around it, shouting the names of those they seek.

“We already know who is missing from here,” said Zori Zayakan of Martuni, a village about 100 miles from Spitak. “The reunification effort is disorderly, but people know they can find out if they ask at enough places.”

Another survivor, Mayor Arzumanyan, said outside his obliterated apartment that he ran home from the factory as soon as the main earthquake stopped. At first he was shocked that the seven stories above his second-floor home were spread like gray boxes in front of the foundation, then noticed his rear apartment had been exposed by the collapse.

“I pulled my two granddaughters and my younger daughter out myself,” said Arzumanyan, 54. “My wife and my older daughter were in the city to buy groceries. I didn’t know what happened to them until (Saturday).”

His wife survived, but his 27-year-old daughter was flown to Moscow in critical condition and he did not know her fate.

Like others remaining in Spitak, Arzumanyan has been camping in the near-freezing weather with bedding salvaged from the wreckage, waiting for debris to be cleared away. He says he must find documents and a stash of money to help his family resettle.

Most of the homeless have been taken to undamaged areas of the mountainous republic or bused to Yerevan, where they wait for flights or other transport to stay with relatives elsewhere.

The discomfort of waiting without lodging, food or access to toilets is mostly taken in stride by Armenians who see the earthquake as another chapter in their tragic history.

“We lost 1.5 million people in 1915,” said Varchik Azaryan, recalling the Turkish massacre of 73 years ago. “We have survived that as a nation, and we will survive whatever fate we meet.”