Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 1, 1990 TAG: 9004010135
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Daniel Howes Higher Education Writer
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
Schools, kindergartens and clinics have reopened, but students are struggling to learn without the aid of textbooks, and other officials are contending with inadequate lighting and heating and scarce space.
That's the picture painted by Frederick Krimgold, a Virginia Tech architecture professor and earthquake specialist who just returned from his fifth trip to the Soviet Union since the Dec. 7, 1988, disaster.
The one that struck at 11:41 a.m., paused for three minutes and then rattled, shook and tumbled buildings again.
Spitak, some 15 kilometers from the quake's epicenter and about 100 kilometers north of Yerevan, the capital, was devastated. Leninakan, a city of 235,000, suffered tremendous damage.
Four days after the quake, 18 American firefighters, eight dog handlers and their charges, three emergency physicians and Krimgold landed in Yerevan, ready to help Armenian and central Soviet authorities dig out from under the rubble and begin rebuilding.
Krimgold, associate dean of Tech's College of Architecture and Urban Studies, has been studying earthquakes and their effect on buildings since 1970. Mexico City, 1985 - he was there. Same for last fall's Loma Prieta quake near San Francisco.
He describes himself as an "earthquake hazard mitigation specialist," one who in recent years has specialized in search-and-rescue operations after destructive tremors.
In Armenia, he examined crumbled buildings and homes, trying to decide if rescuers should risk their own lives to pick through the rubble and extract trapped residents.
Nine-story apartment buildings - the ones that had won national Soviet awards for their efficiency and economy in the 1970s - had tumbled in on their inhabitants.
Krimgold recalls canceling searches, even as 100 townspeople helplessly looked on, wondering if their friends or relatives were underneath the crumbled concrete and twisted steel. Some would grab his hand and plead with him to allow the search to continue.
"It was a very upsetting and disconcerting experience," he said. "My own feeling is that, in fact, we have to live for the living."
Soviet civil defense groups, organized decades ago in anticipation of nuclear attacks, proved useless in the face of a natural disaster. Volunteers from across the Soviet Union - amd teams from 18 foreign countries - made their way to Armenia to aid the rescue efforts.
Together, they pulled about 14,000 people from apartment buildings, businesses and homes, Krimgold said.
The Americans' contributions did not go unnoticed or unrewarded. Last February, Moscow's ambassador to the United States bestowed the Soviet Medal of Honor for Personal Courage on Krimgold and eight other Americans - the first time foreigners had received the award.
But the struggle to adequately house Armenians and restore symbols of their ancient history - such as Leninakan's destroyed replica of the Cathedral of Ani - continues.
Rebuilding efforts that began with frenzied planning less than two weeks after the quake have been derailed by the ethnic strife between Christian Armenians and Muslim Azerbaijanis.
Loosened political controls, exemplified by the buzzwords glasnost and perestroika, loosened ancient animosities as Armenians demanded Azerbaijan relinquish control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan.
"After 70 years of enforced peace, this intense hatred . . . blossomed up again," Krimgold said.
While attending a United Nations conference in May on natural disasters, Krimgold surveyed the progress of new construction around Spitak and Leninakan. "I was amazed. I thought, `My God, they might do it,' " they might rebuild within their two-year deadline.
But last June, as some 50,000 workers were making their way to Armenia from across the Soviet Union to help build new housing, hospitals and industry, Azerbaijani extremists began stopping trains from crossing Azerbaijan on their way to quake-ravaged Armenia. Some 70 percent of the Transcaucasian country's rail service crosses Azerbaijan.
The trains carried concrete, steel and fuel, the stuff of contemporary building. Prefabricated construction units were vandalized, their windows shattered and door frames ruined.
"The Azerbaijanis effectively sabotaged the construction season," Krimgold said. "When the materials stopped, a lot of workers left. They're [now] trying to get back the people who were committed" to the rebuilding.
Now, 15 months into the planned 24-month construction cycle, only 17 percent of the building has been completed, prompting Soviet officials to concede the projects will not be completed on schedule.
"Even with this tremendously adverse situation, they've done a helluva lot," he said, having recently surveyed the progress for Congress in an effort to decide how $5 million in U.S. aid to Armenia should be spent.
Virginia Tech is planning to do its part in the rebuilding effort: In May, Krimgold will return to Armenia to select five graduate students who will study urban design and planning at Tech centers in Blacksburg and Alexandria, later taking their new-found knowledge home and putting it to work.
by CNB