Woman, 62, Found Alive Amid Rubble : Soviet Quake Victim’s Discovery Follows Rescue of 21 Others

A week and a half after Armenia’s devastating earthquake, searchers on Saturday gently extricated a 62-year-old woman from a collapsed building here. The rescue came a day after reports that 21 more survivors had been found.

Soviet television reported Friday night that 20 people had been found alive Thursday in the ruins of Leninakan and one in Spitak, another Armenian city shattered by the Dec. 7 quake.

“The rescue workers in Spitak were so encouraged by finding one alive that they decided to work for 10 more days,” Soviet Premier Nikolai I. Ryzhkov told interviewers after a meeting in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, of the Politburo commission managing the disaster aftermath.

Ryzhkov did not give details on how the 21 reported survivors were found.

Soviet officials in the past few days have stressed the need for rescue efforts to continue while conceding chances were getting slimmer of finding anyone alive.

Little Hope

On Friday, France announced the withdrawal of its 497-member relief team, and a U.S. aid official in Moscow said Thursday that a 45-member American relief team was pulling out because there was little hope of finding more survivors.

A Soviet official overseeing search and rescue efforts in this city of the Caucasus Mountain region--once home to more than 250,000--said it was now just as urgent to bury the dead to prevent the spread of disease.

“We must get out the dead. We must bury them,” Armenian Deputy Premier Vartkes Artsruny said.

Red Star, the military daily, reported that rescue teams in Leninakan have begun wearing masks to filter the air they breathe, since many decomposing bodies still lie under the debris.

Doctors cannot guarantee that the city’s restored water system has not been contaminated by decomposing bodies, the newspaper said.

And more looters--some of them rescue workers--were caught Saturday pilfering from the ruins of the quake, which Soviet officials estimate took 55,000 lives, injured tens of thousands and left up to half a million homeless.

The trapped woman in Leninakan, identified by witnesses only as Lucy, was eased from the rubble after a 20-member rescue team from Czechoslovakia heard her voice under the rubble, witnesses said.

Trapped in Wreckage

It took 2 1/2 hours to free the woman from the wreckage of what had been the kitchen of a third-floor apartment.

The bodies of four children, apparently the woman’s grandchildren, were also found in the building’s debris.

The woman, who looked alert and gripped the stretcher on which she was placed, was rushed to a hospital. Dr. Sergei Uruman marveled that she was still alive after being buried for 10 days, but said she had suffered extensive injuries to a thigh and was in critical condition.

“It was a miracle, but I doubt she will live,” said Uruman. The woman was later airlifted to Yerevan for emergency care.

Picture of Despair

At a smoldering campfire near the ruined nine-story building sat the woman’s daughter, who appeared to be in her 40s. Sobbing, she repeated the names of relatives killed in the apartment where her mother was found.

In Geneva, meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross urged a temporary halt in worldwide relief shipments because of the need to assess what relief is most needed and to avoid waste.

Edgard Eeckman, a spokesman for the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said: “It’s not that there are no more needs in Armenia. The message is, ‘Let’s stop for a little while to make an evaluation.’ ”