Archive · Assignments

Armenia

1988 · With EMAK on its first mission beyond Greece, in still-Soviet Armenia — seven photographs and the report for ERT.

The assignment with which Argyris Dinopoulos began his long career covering international events was in Armenia, which at the time, in December 1988, was one of the socialist republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

One of the deadliest earthquakes of the 20th century struck the towns of Spitak and Leninakan in Armenia on 7 December 1988, the death toll reaching, by estimates, as many as 50,000.

Argyris Dinopoulos, as a reporter for ERT, accompanied the Greek relief mission to the two earthquake-stricken towns, which reached the area by military C-130 aircraft through the airport at Tbilisi in Georgia.

That relief mission was made up of men from the Special Disaster Response Unit (EMAK), which had been formed only a year earlier (1987), and it was the first time it had operated abroad.

Conditions made the transmission of television pictures from Leninakan impossible, even over terrestrial networks (satellite links were out of the question), and so Argyris Dinopoulos covered EMAK's dramatic rescue operations by telephone, from the city's telecommunications centre, which was barely functioning.

Even so the television material was broadcast by ERT after the mission returned and, such was the emotion it stirred, it was presented by Argyris Dinopoulos at events organised by the Armenian community in Greece.

The ERT television crew was the cameraman Giorgos Stavridis and the sound technician Isidoros Chamarakis.

Shortly before boarding the C-130 at Elefsina airport, Giorgos Stavridis (an experienced cameraman and cinematographer) made one last check of his camera, then a new type, a Beta Cam that had only just replaced the U-matic cameras.

He found that the camera's electronics had seized and that it was effectively useless. A replacement camera was rushed to Elefsina airport from the ERT building in Agia Paraskevi.

The C-130's departure was delayed by almost an hour, but thanks to Giorgos Stavridis's experience and foresight Argyris Dinopoulos filed the first report outside Greece of his journalistic career, in the course of which he covered devastating earthquakes not only in Greece but abroad.