On December 7, 1988, an earthquake shattered the north of Soviet Armenia. Three decades later, the region is yet to recover from a disaster that killed more than 25,000 people and destroyed tens of thousands of homes.
1 Gyumri (known during the Soviet period as Leninakan) photographed two years before disaster struck. The city is Armenia’s second-largest, after the capital, Yerevan.
2 A clock in Gyumri, frozen at the moment the earthquake struck, when workers and schoolchildren were inside on a chilly Wednesday.
3 A man holds the body of his dead child in Gyumri. The quake lasted just 20 seconds, with a magnitude of 6.8, but the dust cleared to scenes of utter devastation.
4 Most residential buildings in the region were shoddy Soviet-era apartment blocks that crumpled into piles of rubble.
5 Rescue workers scrambling through broken concrete in Gyumri. Of 78 high-rise apartment blocks in the city, just six survived the quake.
6 Many of the region’s buildings cracked at their base, leading to some structures toppling like felled trees.
7 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (left) cut short a visit to New York, where he had been feted by the press and thousands of cheering Americans, to fly into Soviet Armenia’s nightmare.
8 Grieving locals near their destroyed house. Gorbachev declared, “In my entire life, I’ve never seen one-thousandth of the suffering I’ve seen here.”
9 Workers transporting a coffin. Unlike previous carefully censored disasters in the Soviet Union, the earthquake’s aftermath took place under the glare of a newly unleashed Soviet media, thanks to Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, or “openness.”
10 A man grieving over a loved one. The press coverage was devastating for the U.S.S.R. as revelations of reckless construction sent shockwaves through the Soviet public.
11 Soviet soldiers working to clear the piles of rubble. Gorbachev asked one interviewer, “Who is to blame for the fact that in the concrete blocks there is too little cement but more than enough sand? This means the cement was stolen. By whom?”
12 Along with Gyumri, the town of Spitak (pictured) was leveled, with most of the town’s population lying “entombed” after the quake.
13 A survivor trapped under tons of rubble. International help soon poured into Armenia, leading to the largest international cooperation since WWII.
14 Barrels of fish being prepared for airlift into Armenia from Soviet Kyrgyzstan. As foreign aid descended on Armenia, Gyumri’s airport, which usually received around four arrivals per day, was soon fielding as many as 180.
15 On December 12, a Soviet military transport plane crashed on approach to the chaotic Gyumri airport, killing 78 people. Soon afterward, a Yugoslav plane — also part of the relief effort — crashed near Yerevan, killing seven.
16 As winter closed in, some 150,000 survivors were left homeless in the mountainous north of Armenia. Soon afterward, as the Soviet Union collapsed, aid and rebuilding efforts stalled.
17 Today Gyumri is yet to recover, with rebuilding happening in fits and starts and hundreds of people still living in makeshift housing. This structure has been built around a mobile trailer.
18 Earthquake-damaged buildings in Gyumri in 2013. Since the quake, which destroyed most of the town’s factories, the population has nearly halved. For quake survivors and many other Armenians, the lure of a job in neighboring Russia is strong. One Gyumri local told a reporter in 2013 that “unemployment and poverty are more terrifying” than the prospect of another earthquake.