British Rescuers Return to Spitak 30 Years After Earthquake

BBC has extensively covered the British rescuers who provided assistance to Armenia during the devastating Spitak earthquake, returning to Armenia 30 years after the disaster.

In December 1988, rescue teams from many Western countries arrived to aid Armenia, including 23 firefighter-rescuers from Lancashire, England.

Below are excerpts from the media coverage:

It was a period of reconstruction, and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev was in the USA during the earthquake, where he called on Western countries to help Soviet Armenia.

“It was unusual for Gorbachev to ask for international aid, and it was unusual for Western rescuers to be invited to the Soviet Union,” recalls Paul Burns. “I think the locals were also surprised that the West had come to help them.”

“At least we gave people the opportunity to bury their loved ones in a Christian manner,” says British rescuer Reggie Berry, looking at the gravestones in the Armenian cemetery in Spitak.

Thirty years ago, he was there with his firefighter colleague to save lives. However, what they encountered were only bodies… countless bodies…

Two members of that team, Commander Paul Burns and firefighter Reggie Berry, returned to Spitak thirty years later with BBC and Public Radio of Armenia reporters.

Irishman Burns and his friends gathered supplies over the course of two days. Naturally, they had the necessary equipment, food, and warm clothing—jackets, coats, socks, sleeping bags—provided to them by American soldiers at a base in Burtonwood, near Liverpool, representatives of another non-allied country during the Cold War.