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The outside world responded almost as quickly as Gorbachev did to the devastation. Medical supplies, rescue equipment and trained search teams from France, West Germany, Britain, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Poland were flown + into the Soviet Union, and more aid was offered by countries from Latin America to the Far East. Perhaps the most striking symbol of change was the Kremlin's formal request for American help. Washington responded immediately with offers of medicine and medical equipment, doctors and trained rescue teams, the first time that large-scale U.S. assistance had been given to the Soviet Union since the end of World War II. Over the weekend the first U.S. cargo plane arrived in Yerevan, carrying rescue experts and sniffer dogs. On Sunday tragedy struck again: a Soviet military transport plane carrying soldiers to help rescue victims crashed at the airport in Leninakan, killing 79 people.
At the same time, private U.S. groups, many of them organized by Armenian Americans, were amassing money, clothing and other supplies under the auspices of the American Red Cross. In Glendale, Calif., home to many of the state's 300,000 Armenians, a relief group quickly collected $7 million in pledges. In Cambridge, Mass., sister city to Yerevan, a disaster relief fund was launched to send medical supplies to Armenia. This outpouring of aid from Americans helped underscore Gorbachev's words when he told the U.N. General Assembly last week that "our common goal" can only be reached through cooperation.
The earthquake was the latest catastrophe for the Armenians, an ancient people who through the ages have been massacred, conquered and divided. Their home is a region of mountain ranges and fertile valleys, roughly the size of Maryland, lying in what the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov called the "high Caucasian maze." Of the republic's 3.5 million people, 90% are Armenian.
The quake's epicenter was 25 miles northeast of Leninakan, the republic's second largest city. Rumbling through a fault only twelve miles below the surface, the quake toppled all buildings higher than two stories within a radius of 30 miles, an area with a population of about 700,000. Armenian towns and cities such as Kirovakan, Stepanavan, and Leninakan were largely destroyed. Even Yerevan, 65 miles from the epicenter, suffered damage. The earthquake came in a minute-long tremor, followed four minutes later by a sharp aftershock, measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale. The timing could not have been worse: at midmorning, public buildings were full of people.