The 1988 Armenian earthquake, also known as the Spitak earthquake (Armenian: Սպիտակի երկրաշարժ, Spitaki yerkrasharj), occurred on December 7 at 11:41 local time with a surface wave magnitude of 6.8 and a maximum MSK intensity of X (Devastating).

The shock occurred in the northern region of Armenia (then part of the Soviet Union) which is vulnerable to large and destructive earthquakes and is part of a larger active seismic belt that stretches from the Alps to the Himalayas. Activity in the area is associated with tectonic plate boundary interaction and the source of the event was slip on a thrust fault just to the north of Spitak. The complex incident ruptured multiple faults, with a strike-slip event occurring shortly after the initiation of the mainshock. Between 25,000 and 50,000 were killed and up to 130,000 were injured.

Seismologists thoroughly studied the effects of the Spitak event, including the mainshock and aftershock fault rupture mechanisms, and were on site setting up temporary seismometers before the end of 1988. Earthquake engineering experts scrutinized building construction styles and found fault in the poorly constructed apartments and other buildings that were built during the Era of Stagnation under the rule of Leonid Brezhnev. The cities of Spitak, Leninakan (Gyumri) and Kirovakan (Vanadzor) were greatly affected with large losses of life and devastating effects to buildings and other structures. A number of the smaller outlying villages away from the larger population centers were also severely affected.

Despite the tensions of the Cold War, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev formally asked the United States for humanitarian help within a few days of the earthquake, the first such request since the late 1940s. One hundred and thirteen countries sent substantial amounts of humanitarian aid to the Soviet Union in the form of rescue equipment, search teams and medical supplies. Private donations and assistance from non-governmental organizations also had a large part of the international effort. While transporting some of these supplies to the region, a Soviet aircraft carrying 9 crew members and 69 military personnel, and a transport plane from Yugoslavia, were both destroyed in separate incidents. In support of the relief effort, recording artists united to produce several music-related contributions for the victims of the quake. A song was produced by a duo of French composers (including Charles Aznavour) and a studio album that featured songs donated by mainstream rock bands was released from the Rock Aid Armenia effort by the British music industry.

Earthquake

The source of the event was a fault rupture 40 kilometers (25 mi) south of the Caucasus Mountains, a mountain range that has been produced by the convergence of the Arabian and the Eurasian tectonic plates. The range is situated along an active seismic belt that stretches from the Alps in southern Europe to the Himalayas in Asia. The seismicity along this belt is marked by frequent major earthquakes from the Aegean Sea, through Turkey and Iran, and into Afghanistan. Though the recurrence of seismic events in Armenia does not reach the high frequency that is seen in other segments of this zone, rapid crustal deformation there is associated with active thrust faulting and volcanic activity. Mount Ararat, a 5,137 m (16,854 ft) dormant volcano, lies 100 km (62 mi) to the south of the quake's epicenter in Turkey.

The earthquake occurred along a known 60 km (37 mi) thrust fault striking parallel to the Caucasus range and dipping to the north-northeast. Bruce Bolt, a seismologist and a professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, walked the length of the fault scarp in 1992 and found that the vertical displacement measured 1 m (3.3 ft) along most of the length with the southwest end reaching 1.6 m (5.2 ft). During the earthquake, the northeast-facing side of the Spitak section rode up and over the southwest-facing side.

Waveform modeling established that the faulting originated at a depth of 5 km (3.1 mi) with the epicenter on the Alavar thrust fault on the slopes of the Lesser Caucasus mountains north of Mount Aragats. The mainshock produced surface rupture and propagated to the west with a separate strike-slip sub-event occurring two seconds later that propagated to the southeast. Going westward the fault split into two branches, a north-dipping reverse fault (north branch) and a right slip fault (south branch), but neither produced surface rupture. A total of five sub-events occurred in the first eleven seconds and an aftershock measuring 5.8 (local magnitude) occurred four minutes and twenty seconds later.

Damage Some of the strongest shaking occurred in industrial areas with chemical and food processing plants, electrical substations, and power plants. The Metsamor Nuclear Power Plant, around 75 km (47 mi) from the epicenter, experienced only minor shaking and no damage occurred there, but was eventually closed for a period of six years due to vulnerability concerns. It was reopened in 1995 in order to relieve Armenia of a major energy blockade imposed by Azerbaijan due to the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, amid criticism of lack of training, political instability in the Caucasus region, and accusations that the plant was of inadequate design.

Many buildings did not hold up to the shaking of the earthquake and those that did collapse often lacked any survival space, but lack of effective medical care and poor planning also contributed to the substantial scope of the disaster. Buildings that didn't collapse featured well-maintained masonry and skeletal components that were joined together adequately in a way that allowed for the building to resist seismic waves. Most bridges and tunnels and other public infrastructure withstood the earthquake but hospitals did not fare well. Most collapsed, killing two-thirds of their doctors, destroying equipment and medicine, and reducing the capacity to handle the critical medical needs in the region.

The Soviet news media and government officials soon began to discuss the apparent substandard construction styles that had caused so many of Armenia's buildings to collapse. Gorbachev, in a TV interview several weeks after his expedited return from New York City, said that the concrete blocks had been built with more than enough sand but too little concrete, and suggested that the concrete had been stolen. Leonid Bibin, deputy chairman of the state building committee, stated that many newer homes collapsed as well and that he was beginning an investigation into the matter and that criminal charges would be brought. The official communist party newspaper Pravda said that poor construction, like other issues of neglect in the Soviet system, could be blamed on the Era of Stagnation from the era of Leonid Brezhnev.

A team of earthquake and engineering experts from the United States spent a period of time in Armenia in December 1988 and January 1989. The group, including a structural engineer who specialized in seismic-resistant designs, agreed that building inadequacies were the primary reason why the strong (but not huge) earthquake was so damaging, although the freezing temperatures also played a role in the unusually high death toll. The earthquake death toll was by far the highest worldwide in the 1980s and third-highest worldwide in the period 1971–2003 (33 years). The engineers who scrutinized the damaged buildings and the rescue workers who had dismantled the buildings while extricating survivors ascribe both design shortcomings and improper construction methods for the failure of the buildings. The Soviets had modified their construction style to accommodate the known seismic risk in the area, but they acknowledged to the team that many of the buildings were not built to withstand an earthquake of that magnitude. An engineer with the team stated that the regulations for the area mandated that buildings be required to stand up against events measuring seven or eight on the twelve-degree Medvedev–Sponheuer–Karnik scale. The earthquake's effects were assessed at ten on that seismic scale.

The three cities closest to the fault rupture experienced different levels of damage. Both Leninakan and Kirovakan were roughly equidistant from the shock, yet Leninakan had greater damage. This may be explained by a 300–400 m (980–1,310 ft) sedimentary layer that is present beneath the city. The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's team compared building damage in each city and observed similar results when comparing stone buildings four stories or less in height, but for taller frame-stone buildings, 62% were destroyed at Leninakan while only 23% collapsed at Kirovakan. While on-site during aftershock monitoring, the US research team verified the presence of soil amplification effects when pronounced differences in readings were observed when compared with nearby rock sites. Uneven distribution of the seismic energy may have also contributed to the fluctuation in damage.

In late December the last of the survivors that were able to be extricated were pulled from the fallen buildings, rescue operations ceased, and the cleanup began, beginning with the destruction of buildings that were too heavily damaged to be repaired. Six friends were in the basement of a nine-story building relocating barrels when it came down around them on December 7. Their injuries were minor, but one person did suffer a broken arm. They supposedly sustained themselves on the food supplies—fruit salad, pickles, and smoked ham—that were available in the basement for 35 days before their rescue in January, but this turned out to be a hoax.

Aftermath

Avant-garde musician Pierre Schaeffer led a 498-member French rescue team to look for survivors in Leninakan, and worked there until all foreign personnel were asked to leave after the plan to bulldoze what was left of the ruins was formulated. The total number of volunteer rescue personnel in Leninakan totalled 2,000, with teams from Austria, Canada, Switzerland, the United States, Poland and Yugoslavia. Nikolai Ryzhkov, the then Chairman of the Council of Ministers, was awarded the National Hero of Armenia for his work in rebuilding the city following the earthquake.

Seventy-eight people were killed while on a relief mission to Leninakan when a Soviet Ilyushin Il-76 crashed on approach to the airport there. Nine crew and 69 military personnel were on board the plane that struck a helicopter in foggy conditions at the small airport that was overrun with rescue flights. In the days following the earthquake, the normally quiet airstrip was receiving up to 180 flights per day carrying food, medical supplies, and disaster management experts. Those who were killed on the plane were planning to join an estimated 20,000 soldiers and 85,000 civil defense workers in rescue efforts by searching for survivors, supplying food and water, and setting up sanitation facilities in the region. At the Yerevan airport, western pilots reported a breakdown in air traffic control communications, with flight controllers not delivering the necessary flight navigation instructions, allowing for a critical lack of separation as foreign planes made their way into the area.

A second air transport incident occurred the following day at Yerevan (capital of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic) when an Antonov An-12 from Yugoslavia crashed, killing all seven crew on board. The crash was blamed on the pilots' failure to properly adjust the altimeter following a miscommunication with the air traffic controllers.

A group of French recording artists and actors came together with the French writer and composer Charles Aznavour to record the 1989 song "Pour toi Arménie" (For you Armenia). Aznavour, together with Armenian-French composer Georges Garvarentz, formed a foundation called "Aznavour for Armenia" and composed the song as a call for help for the Armenians. It took six weeks from the creation of the song to completion of the disc and with almost two million copies sold, the foundation was able to build 47 schools and three orphanages for the victims of the disaster. Rock Aid Armenia, also known in earlier stages as Live Aid Armenia, was a humanitarian effort by the British music industry to raise money to help those affected by the earthquake. A monument, Armenian Earthquake, expressing the appreciation of the Armenian people for assistance from the U.S. was erected in Washington, D.C. in 1990.

Response

Gorbachev set aside 5 billion rubles (about US$8 billion) in funds for a start on what would likely be a recovery cost that would exceed the cleanup bill for the 1986 nuclear and radiation accident in Ukraine. While foreign doctors did assist with the Chernobyl incident, the Soviet relief effort after the earthquake was augmented by the largest foreign cooperation since World War II. That deluge of western aid was a byproduct of the disaster that may have had a positive effect on Soviet Union–United States relations. The cost of rebuilding would be a severe obstacle for Perestroika, Gorbachev's plan for economic restructuring. Another adverse effect of the disaster was that the Armenians were already distrustful of Gorbachev's dismissal of their claims to the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which the Armenians had been contesting with neighboring Azerbaijan.

The world responded rapidly to the disaster in Leninakan and Spitak, with much of Europe sending cargo aircraft loaded with medical supplies, rescue equipment, and trained personnel to assist in the recovery, and even more reinforcement coming in from Latin America and the Far East. Mikhail Gorbachev was in New York on his first day of visits with Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush at the time of the earthquake, and once the scale of the disaster was realized, a quick departure was made back to Armenia, with the Kremlin formally asking for American help. Washington immediately responded with offers of doctors, medical equipment, and rescue teams, and by the first weekend the first US plane arrived in Yerevan with search and rescue teams and detection dogs.

The French arrived in Armenia in the late evening on Friday, December 9, and relieved the exhausted Armenian workers who then returned to Yerevan.[36] Japan sent a monetary gift of $9 million while Italy had plans to build a prefabricated village for the victims, and West Germany offered to send more than a dozen heavy cranes. The Americans donated generously as well, with Washington dispatching eight official planeloads of official relief aid plus a Lockheed C-141 Starlifter from Italy. Private donations from the United States were also significant. Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca arranged for a fund drive, and in Chicago (one of five major Armenian population centers in the US) the community raised $800,000 and donated 9,000 kilograms (20,000 lb) of supplies.

American businessman and philanthropist Armand Hammer, well known to the Soviet Union for his financial pursuits and humanitarian ties, left Los Angeles for Armenia onboard a Boeing 727 loaded with 1,000 kg (2,300 lb) of medical supplies that were provided by the American Red Cross. Hammer, known for his decades of work with the Occidental Petroleum Corporation, had spoken with Gorbachev prior to leaving and was carrying with him $1 million in relief funds. Half of those funds were from World Vision International, a California-based relief and development umbrella organization and the other half were his own personal donation. The flight also carried Robert Seiple (president of World Vision) and a UCLA doctor who had worked in the aftermath of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

Red tape inevitably held up some of the rescue efforts and criticism of the perceived flawed processes soon followed. The newspaper Pravda complained that the lack of cranes meant that "seconds and hours are being lost—that means lives." The paper also stated that too many Soviet personnel were giving advice and not enough people were actually searching. The daily newspaper Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya noted that there were families living out in the open even while there was an abundance of tents available. Health minister Yevgeniy Chazov urged the creation of a governmental body to assist with disaster management. Baxter International, an American health care company with headquarters in Deerfield, Illinois, designed and built a flying medical lab set up with 20 dialysis machines to be used with victims suffering from crush syndrome (trauma associated with building collapses), but were unable to get started for four days until the visas were available. With the hospitals destroyed and their limited knowledge of the care requirements, the Soviets were not well-equipped to deal with the cases of crush syndrome. Author and professor of geopolitics Pierre Verluise detailed in his 1995 book Armenia in Crisis: The 1988 Earthquake, how a French doctor and director of a Leninakan hospital described that he had seen one hundred victims suffering from the syndrome each day during the first three days. In order to prevent kidney failure or death, the treatment requires prompt hospitalization, and, according to the doctor, the victims were not receiving adequate medication and dialysis and, as a result, most died before the arrival of the first foreign dialysis machines.