The Armenian Earthquake

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.5 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2018

⏱️ 9 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A catastrophic earthquake hit northern Armenia on the morning of December 7th 1988. At least 20,000 people were killed and thousands more injured. Anahit Karapetian was in school when the tremors hit her hometown of Spitak close to the epicentre. She was trapped in the rubble for hours, surrounded by injured and dead classmates. She has been speaking to Dina Newman about what she went through.

Photo: Ruins in Armenia in 1988. Credit: Getty Images

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less searching
0:25.7	and a lot more watching. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:29.8	Hello, you're listening to the Witness podcast on the BBC World Service with me
0:33.7	Dina Newman. On December 7th 1988 a powerful earthquake struck the north of
0:40.8	Armenia killing at least 20,000 people.
0:45.0	The town of Spitak near the epicenter was raised to the ground.
0:49.2	Anaid-carapitan was a 14-year-old schoolgirl at the time.
0:53.0	We were at our physics lesson.
0:58.0	We were at our physics lesson.
1:00.0	We had a young teacher who was very strict.
1:03.0	We always paid attention during her lessons.
1:05.0	We were afraid to utter even a word.
1:08.0	The class was perfectly quiet
1:10.0	while she was explaining the new lesson. Suddenly we heard a sound like thunder and then we saw the blackboard and the wall behind the teacher collapsing in front of our eyes.
1:25.0	When the second tremor struck, everything happened so quickly
1:31.0	we didn't even have time to realize what was going on.
	...

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