2 Doctors Tell 2,500 Here of Armenia Visit

More than 2,500 Los Angeles-area Armenians--still stunned and grieving from the earthquake that struck Soviet Armenia on Dec. 7--packed a Glendale school auditorium Sunday to hear from the first Armenian-Americans to travel to their devastated homeland.

A Glendale orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Vartkes Najarian, and an Orange County kidney specialist, Dr. Garo Terzagian, told the crowd that shortages of medical supplies and the lack of some basic medical technology had hindered efforts to treat those injured in the temblor that rumbled through the Caucasus Mountains.

The two physicians were among 27 people on the first U.S. government plane to reach Armenia after the quake.

First U.S. Aid Effort

The plane was one of three that departed Dec. 10 in the first official U.S. aid effort for the Soviet Union since the end of World War II. The flights were sponsored by the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Sunday night’s meeting at Hoover High School was more of a communal pep rally than an information session.

With about 100 unable to get in, those inside the auditorium wept for their loved ones and cheered the frequent mentions of human perseverance in the face of disaster.

The two doctors--directors of Medical Outreach for Soviet Armenians, a four-year-old, nonprofit organization that sends sophisticated medical equipment to Soviet Armenia--had little new information on the disaster. They estimated the death toll at 100,000, nearly double the official Soviet estimates.

But their reports, delivered in Armenian as well as English, appeared to soothe the minds of many in the audience, who have been unable to understand much of the English-language coverage of the disaster.

Again and again, the earthquake was compared to what is the greatest measure of tragedy for the Armenian people--the Turkish massacres of 1915.

“As I flew over our homeland in a helicopter, it was as if I were witnessing the genocide again,” Terzagian said. “You could feel the smell of death hovering over what used to be beautiful towns. I had nightmares after that because I could remember those faces, some of them caught in a surprised expression as if to say, ‘What is happening to us? Why the Armenians again?’ ”

Najarian urged the audience to help repopulate their homeland.

“We can build the houses again. We can build the schools. But how do we fill them?” Najarian asked. “To every young Armenian couple our motto must be: One more child for the Motherland!”