Spitak Earthquake - 1988

[King Raa]

Basically - there is a severe lack of information on the internet:
> On what kind of instruction there was to people to deal with earthquakes
> (In detail) On the kinds of structures that were used in Spitak to cause near 100% destruction.
So I come here (by accident) and think, Ah! Armenian people might know something about Armenian earthquakes...

Any and all information you can muster would be useful, thank you.

[IAmMadAtAC]

I've noticed the severe lack of information as well. Recently I went to look up info on it because I saw in some article or something talk about the 80,000 Armenians killed in it. I knew that number was far too high to be the real one, and expected a lot of information on-line for the actual details. Well I found all sorts of statistics, 40,000 was one but I knew that was wrong too. A few others mentioned about 25,000 which I remember hearing as the right number give or take. But there is suprisingly little information on it, and it conflicting information, very disappointing.

[Che_Ka]

I'm pretty sure the death toll was 25,000. The number left homeless was several times greater (for some reason, I remember either 100,000 or 250,000 -- the latter seems too high, but I don't know).

[ArmoBarbi]

I remember the first time I learned about it. It was going on at the time of Sumgait, and people from Azerbaijan were sending their kids to Armenia for safety. Of course, many of those kids ended up dying from the earthquake instead.

I was in Armenia at the time, but in Yerevan, where we felt shakes but nothing really happened around us. Its so sad to think about all those people dying. Our nation has lost so many people. Im always upset to hear about population loss. These look pretty worthwhile:

http://www.arminco.com/hayknet/npad28.htm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/10/newsid_2544000/2544077.stm

http://www.atgusa.org/News.22/current_category.27/news_detail.html

Good luck

[King Raa]

I wanted information about the way in which people in Armenia are taught to deal with earthquakes - go outside, shelter in doorways...

This might interest you.

Magniture 6.9
Major damage across 400sq kilometres (landslides helped this)
Affected Armenia and NE Turkey
Spitak was destroyed - 80% of Leninakan destroyed.
I think 60 settlements severely damaged.
700,000 people affected - 100,000 dead (take into account the area of effect and things such as disease, lack of shelter etc - elderly dieing of hypothermia is likely).

Anyway.

[Thai-Samurai]

http://moon.yerphi.am/~spitak/

The Spitak Rescue Foundation. Founded after rescuing people from the Spitak Earthquake.