’ . . . A Lesson for Us in Los Angeles’ : ‘Death and Destruction Horrifying,’ Hammer Reports

American industrialist Armand Hammer, who brought a planeload of urgently needed medicines and equipment to Soviet Armenia, on Monday described the devastation as the worst disaster he had ever seen and probably the worst in the country’s history.

“The death and the destruction are horrifying,” Hammer said on his return to Moscow from Yerevan, Armenia’s capital. “I thought the Mexican earthquake was bad, but this is much, much worse. . . . Even photos and television film cannot convey the whole tragedy of what has happened.”

The September, 1985, Mexico City quake left about 9,500 people dead. Soviet officials have said that 40,000 to 45,000 people died in Wednesday’s temblor in Armenia, and unofficial calculations have placed the toll as high as 100,000.

Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp. of Los Angeles, described Leninakan, which had a population of 290,000, as “a bombed-out ruin, the sort of thing you would have seen after a major bombing raid in World War II.”

Search for Relatives

“People are wandering through what used to be streets with little bits and pieces of their belongings, trying to find relatives, just hoping to see someone they know,” Hammer said. “They are afraid to return to their homes for fear they might collapse and are huddled together in the fields around campfires. They are still in shock, still trying to understand what happened to them.

“Some people are still trying, though they are exhausted, to dig out those who may be trapped beneath the rubble. They are clawing away at this debris with their hands out of desperation. It is a heart-rending scene.”

Rescuers often have to amputate a leg or an arm of many of those who are found. “The gangrene is so serious after five days that they do the amputations right there on the spot,” Hammer said. “They can’t even wait to get these people to a field hospital. They lay them out, give them an anesthetic and amputate--that’s how serious the injuries are.”

All the hospitals and clinics in the area were destroyed by the earthquake, but the Soviet army has opened field hospitals and is evacuating the seriously injured to Yerevan for treatment.

‘Thousands of Operations’

“They have more than 6,000 people hospitalized in Yerevan, and they have run out of space,” Hammer said. “They have conducted literally thousands of emergency operations. These are not easy cases--they have wards of people with crushed faces, with crushed arms and legs, with many internal organs ruptured, with kidney failure.”

Hammer, who first came to the Soviet Union in 1921 as a young physician and businessman on a relief mission, said he would return to the United States today to raise more money for urgently needed medicines and hospital equipment for Armenia.

“Lives are at stake--the need is urgent,” he said. “They will need a lot of money.”

Hammer had brought a ton of medical supplies, including antibiotics, shock drugs, sutures and three kidney dialysis machines, and $1 million in donations from Occidental Petroleum and World Vision, an international relief organization.

“This also should be a lesson for us in Los Angeles,” Hammer added. “I hope that this encourages us to conduct real earthquake drills, to insist on strict standards in construction and on the rigid inspection of buildings. . . . They were caught unawares, but I hope we won’t be.”