Survivor found 10 days after earthquake

Press, 19 December 1988, Page 10

Survivor found 10 days after earthquake

NZPA-AP Leninakan Rescuers yesterday gently freed a 62-year-old woman from a collapsed building 10 days after Armenia’s devastating earthquake, reviving hopes that more survivors can be found if the search is prolonged.

An Armenian official told Soviet television that 20 people had been found alive in the ruins of Leninakan the previous day and one in Spitak, another Armenian city shattered by the December 7 ’quake. However, a Government official overseeing search and rescue efforts in this Caucasus Mountains city, said it was now just as urgent to free and inter the dead to prevent the spread of disease. “We must get out the dead. We must bury them,” the Armenian Deputy Prime Minister, Vardkes Artsruny, said in an interview.

The official casualty toll in the earthquake that rocked north-western Armenia is an estimated 55,000 dead and thousands injured, with some 500,000 homeless. Only 22,312 dead had been recovered by yesterday, said George Reid, spokesman for the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. “Krasnaya Zvezda,” the military daily, reported yesterday that rescue teams in Leninakan had begun wearing masks to purify the air they breathe, since many decomposing bodies still lie under the debris of collapsed buildings.

Doctors cannot guarantee that the city’s restored water system has not been contaminated by putrefying bodies, and rescue workers probing debris for survivors and the dead often eat their meals right by the ruins to save time, the newspaper said. “All these factors might cause diseases and even an epidemic,” “Krasnaya Zvezda” said. 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 from under the rubble, witnesses said.

They worked two-and-a-half hours to free the grey-haired 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, also were found in the debris.

A doctor, Sergei Uruman, said the woman had suffered extensive injuries to a thigh and was in critical condition. “It was a miracle, but I doubt she will live,” he said.

Meanwhile, an International Red Cross spokesman in Geneva called on donors yester-

day to temporarily stop further relief shipments for the ’quake victims. The suspension was aimed at giving officials from the agency’s Geneva headquarters a few days to assess needs in the devastated region and to avoid waste and poor coordination, said a spokesman for the League of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The Armenian official whose report was broadcast on television news said the discovery of one person alive in Spitak spurred officials there to continue looking for survivors for another 10 days.