Jumber Patiashvili, the former leader of Georgia, remembers the earthquake in Armenia

“I will never forget what I saw 20 years ago in Spitak and Gyumri”

by Tatul Hakobyan

Published: Saturday November 15, 2008 in Earthquake 20 Years On

Jumber Patiashvili. Tatul Hakobyan / Armenian Reporter.

Tbilisi - We met Jumber Patiashvili, one of Georgia's former Communist leaders in Tbilisi. Mr. Patiashvili, a nondescript party loyalist, succeeded Eduard Shevardnadze as the First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party in 1985. He was the Communist leader of Georgia until April 1989. By the end of 1988, Georgia's national movement toward independence became more active, expressing itself in many ways, including a hunger strike that was organized by the so-called informal political organizations. The protesters taking part in the hunger strike were brutally dispersed by Soviet troops on April 9, 1989. After the April tragedy, Mr. Patiashvili was removed from office and replaced by the former Georgian KGB chief Givi Gumberidze.

Mr. Patiashvili, who remained in politics after the collapse of the Soviet Union and, in particular, was elected member of independent Georgia's Parliament (from 1992 to 1995 and 2004 to 2008), continues to live in one of the most prestigious areas of Georgia's capital city, Vake, in the same apartment he occupied when he was Georgia's Communist leader. He is one of those Georgians who felt the 1988 earthquake in Armenia as a personal tragedy. Mr. Patiashvili considers the Armenian nation and the Armenian people his friends, loves renowned singer Charles Aznavour and admires Mher Mkrtchian's acting. Twenty years ago, when the earthquake shook Armenia and destroyed about one-third of the country's territories, one of the first people to rush to Spitak and try to help those suffering was Mr. Patiashvili.

Armenian Reporter: Mr. Patiashvili, I was reading a book about the earthquake in which was written, "Among the rescue workers you could see an active man, with white hair, who was giving orders and listening to the relatives of those who were trapped under the ruins. He was the First Secretary of Georgia's Central Committee Jumber Patiashvili." How do you remember that day?"

Jumber Patiashvili: Time goes by very fast. That was 20 years ago. That earthquake shook the Armenian nation, the entire world, including my family and me. I cannot remember every detail of that day, but there are things that I will never forget. On December 7, 1988, I was in my office when the lamp and the furniture shook. I was informed by the relevant service that an earthquake was recorded in the south. However, the first thing I did was to call Dagestan, as it is a seismic zone. Then I called Akhalkalaki and Ninotsminda in the southwest of Georgia. They said that a very strong earthquake had been registered, but they too were yet unaware that Armenia was the epicenter. I immediately left for Ninotsminda by helicopter. A few hours had already passed. Vaso Kochinian, the head of the Ninotsminda region informed me that there were bringing injured people from Armenia. I left for Spitak by helicopter. It was an awful scene; everything had been destroyed. I was in Spitak for the first time and I could not see a city. Everything had been ruined.

AR: What did you do when you arrived in Spitak. Were you among the ruins?

JP: Yes. A woman was standing next to a ruined building and she was crying out loud and asking for help. I approached. Her daughter was trapped under the ruins. "Do you hear her voice? That is my daughter," she told me. But what could I do? Dozens of men gathered in about half an hour and removed her from under the ruins. You know, describing all that I saw there is very difficult right now. It would have been a different thing if there were video cameras to capture all that; it would have been very important for history. I cannot describe in words how people helped one another and gave hope.

When I was preparing to leave for Spitak from Ninotsminda, I called Tbilisi and gave appropriate orders for the preparation of rescue workers, all the necessary equipment, and also a team of doctors. On December 8, Georgian rescue workers were already working on the disaster zone. I remember how we also transported some of the injured to hospitals in Georgia; a few days after the earthquake an Armenian child was born in one of the hospitals in Georgia. Suren Haroutunian, the First Secretary of Armenia's Central Committee, came and we went to that hospital to meet with the mother of the newborn child.

AR: After the earthquake Armenia and its people began a using a unique calculation for the passage of time: the first day after the earthquake, the second day after the earthquake, the third day, and so on. On December 7, you stayed in Spitak for the whole day?

JP: That day there was fog in Spitak and in the evening it started to snow. I asked the crew of my helicopter whether we could fly back to Tbilisi. They said yes, but it was something of a worried and reluctant "yes." It was already dark when we left Spitak. About 15 minutes later, the pilot reported that he could not see anything, had lost his orientation, and we had to make a landing on a highway. He was a very skilled pilot. He made a landing guided by the lights of the cars on the highway [Spitak-Vanadzor road]. We came out of the helicopter. They started to search for a guide who could help us out of that difficult situation: a helicopter had landed in the middle of a highway, it was foggy and it was snowing.

A young driver of a Moskvich [a Soviet-era car] said that he was going to Stepanavan and that he could take us there. We reached Stepanavan in that Moskvich and called Tbilisi from there. The news that a devastating earthquake had taken place in Armenia was already on TV. However, it is hard to imagine the scale of that disaster if you have not seen it with your own eyes.

AR: That day Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader of the Soviet Union, was in the United States. He was supposed to visit Cuba and Great Britain from New York, but after receiving the news of the devastating earthquake in Armenia, he quickly returned to Moscow. How did the leadership of the Soviet Union respond?