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Dazed survivors of Spitak last week began trying to rebuild their lives from what remained of the town: piles of stone and wood and shattered belongings. Men, their faces hairy with a week's growth of beard, aimlessly wandered streets littered with scraps of clothing, pieces of furniture and broken dishes. Women with colorful head scarves plodded along, carrying heavy bundles of clothing salvaged from the wreckage; some carried buckets of water from distribution trucks. Most people lived in military tents, but Manuel Lambaryan and seven friends stayed in a makeshift hut built from the beams of his crumpled house, with a roof stitched from clothing. "This was a beautiful town, full of friends," he said. "But now . . ."
Last Friday a green loudspeaker truck patrolled Spitak, urging all women and children to leave the town. In clipped Armenian, the voice assured residents that they would be sent to trade-union vacation centers in Georgia and the Crimea. Officials said about 38,000 people had been evacuated from the entire earthquake-damaged region and up to 70,000 were expected to leave. But many women in Spitak and other devastated communities refused to go, preferring to keep vigil by the still entombed bodies of their loved ones. "Why should we leave?" asked an elderly woman in Spitak. "This has been our home for 500 years."
A few people apparently viewed the disaster as an opportunity to steal. Pravda said more than $400,000 in pilfered goods had been recovered and 150 looters had been arrested. But 20,000 tents bound for Leninakan disappeared. To prevent looting, a midnight-to-5 a.m. curfew was imposed throughout Armenia, and troops patrolled the streets of Leninakan. TASS reported that a man was arrested in Kirovakan for stripping watches and earrings from the dead. Soviet soldiers were seen removing boots from the dead and trying them on for size. "We shouldn't hide the fact that all kinds of scum are coming to tragedy sites for an easy profit," said army Lieut. General V. Dubinyak, chief of staff of the Interior Ministry troops.
The Soviet press and officials have been questioning the clearly inadequate construction techniques and materials that may have caused many buildings in Armenia to collapse on their inhabitants. During his visit to Armenia after rushing back from New York City two weeks ago, Gorbachev asked a television interviewer, "Who is to blame for the fact that in the concrete blocks there is too little cement but more than enough sand? This means the cement was stolen. By whom?" Leonid Bibin, deputy chairman of the state building committee, launched an investigation into why so many of the more recently built homes collapsed, and said criminal charges could be brought. Pravda said the poor construction, like so many other shortcomings in the Soviet system, could be attributed to the "period of stagnation," which has become the popular reference for the regime of the late Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.