Only days ago, few people had heard of the town of Spitak, high in the Caucasus Mountains of northwest Soviet Armenia. But by last week it had become an international symbol of death and utter destruction, a place where the stench of corpses mingled with fading, desperate hopes that a voice, a whimper or a sigh might be heard from deep beneath the rubble. "A vision of horror," gasped a stunned Dr. Patrick Aeberhard, president of the French humanitarian aid group Medecins du Monde. An estimated 70% of the town's 20,000 population lies entombed, victims of the devastating earthquake that hit two weeks ago. Throughout the region, at least 50,000 are dead, 130,000 injured, 500,000 homeless.
Coffins were stacked in piles on nearly every street corner in Spitak, some cracked open to reveal arms and legs wrapped in plastic bags. Coffins lined the streets of other cities and towns throughout the stricken region. The Soviet news agency TASS said that as of Wednesday 21,755 bodies had been identified from the badly damaged cities of Leninakan and Kirovakan and from 48 villages that had been destroyed.
Early last week ten people were discovered beneath the rubble of Spitak, including an infant still sucking on her pacifier. One of the rescuers, a nursing mother, quickly put the child to her breast. It seemed likely that these would be the last of the estimated 7,000 survivors who have been pulled from the wreckage. "With every day the moans are decreasing," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov. By Friday the French, British, West German and Italian teams had given up the search and returned home and the official American relief team was packing away its equipment. At the beginning of this week, the Soviet army, concerned about infection from the rotting corpses, planned to send in demolition teams to start razing the few pitiful pieces of masonry still standing in the stricken cities and towns.
But that decision provoked an outcry from Armenians, who insisted on picking through the rubble until all their loved ones could be accounted for. On Friday Moscow suddenly reversed itself after dogged rescuers miraculously pulled out of the debris 21 more people, one in Spitak and the rest in Leninakan, who by then had been buried alive for more than a week. Said - Armenian official Eduard Aikazian: "We will continue looking for survivors until there isn't the slightest possibility of finding anybody."
The disaster may yield one positive result: the largest outpouring of foreign aid to the Soviet Union since World War II could produce a surge of goodwill that will further reduce East-West tensions. The disaster held the potential of changing perceptions on both sides: the humanitarian assistance might make the Soviet people view the West as less of a threat, while the pictures of stricken Armenians might make Westerners more sympathetic to the Soviets in general. "It has a humanizing effect," said a senior Western diplomat in Moscow. "It has become part of official policy to express gratitude not only for the aid they receive now, but for past assistance as well."