CLEAR PARALLELS FOR ARMENIA EARTHQUAKE: LESSONS LEARNED IN PAST EARTHQUAKES
ABC News
SHOW: TIME TUNNEL 9:05 AM EST ABC
December 8, 2006 Friday
Anchors: Rob Simmelkjaer
Reporters: Bill Blakemore (New York, NY USA)
CONTENT: TIEN SHAN, EARTHQUAKE, MEXICO CITY, ARMENIA, DOUG JEWETT,
DAVID SIMPSON, VENEZUELA, DADE COUNTY, APLS, HIMALAYAS
PETER JENNINGS (ABC NEWS)
(Off-camera) Try to put the Armenian earthquake in perspective in
the worst earthquake in recent years. It struck the Chinese City of
Tien Shan in 1976 and it measured 7.8 on the Richter scale. Almost a
quarter of a million people died. The Mexico City earthquake in 1985
was an 8.1. 10,000 people died. The disaster in Mexico City, you may
remember, was extensively and widely televised, which means it was
something of a classroom for rescue workers all over the world. In
Soviet Armenia, there are clear parallels. Here’s Bill Blakemore.
GRAPHICS: SOVIET UNION
BILL BLAKEMORE (ABC NEWS)
(Voiceover) The Soviets are facing a terrible problem no nation has
yet been able to solve, how to take a part of collapsed buildings
quickly enough and delicately enough to save unseen thousands buried
alive. Survivors in profound shock usually can’t believe anyone could
be alive in the heavy rubble.
GRAPHICS: 1980
GRAPHICS: ITALY
BILL BLAKEMORE (ABC NEWS)
(Voiceover) But lessons we’ve learned from earthquakes earlier this
decade have taught how people can survive two or three weeks buried
without food or water.
GRAPHICS: 1985
GRAPHICS: MEXICO
BILL BLAKEMORE (ABC NEWS)
(Voiceover) Babies surprised the world in Mexico City when they
were taken out alive from ruined maternity wards in the second
week after their 1985 earthquake. The Mexican buildings were of the
same reinforced concrete construction collapsing down in sandwiching
layers, which we’ve seen now in the first pictures coming from Soviet
Armenia. But the craft of getting quickly into such ruined buildings
is in its infancy. Mexico City saw squabbling among different experts
from France, Mexico, the US, and 45 other nations.
BILL BLAKEMORE (ABC NEWS)
(Voiceover) Doug Jewett of Miami’s Dade County Rescue was one of the
experts in Mexico.
DOUG JEWETT (EARTHQUAKE RESCUE EXPERT)
We have all the resource in the world, but we got one major problem.
We cannot coordinate all these resources. There’s always 15 chiefs
and one Indian.
BILL BLAKEMORE (ABC NEWS)
(Voiceover) After the Mexico quake, international rescue teams met
in Venezuela, to try to get organize for the next big one. But they
failed to agree on standardized rescue techniques. Earthquake rescue
experts in many countries today like these, ready to go in France and
in Britain, wanted to get to Soviet Armenia yesterday. But have had
to wait for governments to work out detail. There’s a series of faults
stretching from the Alps to the Himalayas. The Soviet earthquake was in
the center of this in the Caucasus Mountains. And being in mountains,
say geologists, can make earthquakes worst.
DOCTROR DAVID SIMPSON (SEISMOLOGIST)
It will get much more effect because of landslides, because of loose
soil, because of the ground conditions in the area.
BILL BLAKEMORE (ABC NEWS)
(Voiceover) Great plates of the earth are pushing against each other
there, literally pushing the mountain ranges farther up. And will
go on in doing so for thousands of years to come. But without an
international organized rescue system, the Soviets today are facing
much of the same learning from scratch about catastrophic earthquake
rescue so many have faced before. Bill Blakemore, ABC News, New York.
ROB SIMMELKJAER (ABC NEWS)
(Off-camera) When we come back on ‘Time Tunnel," more on that huge
earthquake in Armenia and a look at a long gone sliced of Americana.
Stay tuned for more ‘Time Tunnel" in just a moment.
COMMERCIAL BREAK