Earthquake Anniversary: 24 years on, some in Gyumri still live in
makeshift conditions
SOCIETY | 07.12.12 | 12:33
Archive Photo: Photolure
A street clock in Gyumri stopped in the aftermath of the earthquake to
show the time when a devastating tremor struck the city on December 7,
1988
By SIRANUYSH GEVORGYAN
ArmeniaNow reporter
Nearly a quarter of a century after the 1988 devastating earthquake
there are still families in Armenia that live with the consequences of
that natural disaster.
A powerful tremor struck the Spitak region of Armenia close to midday
December 7, 1988, at a time when most children were in schools and
adults at work. As a result, the earthquake measuring 6.9 on the
Richter scale killed at least 25,000 people, causing vast destruction
in the towns and villages in large parts of northern Armenia.
Twenty-four years on, however, some people in the affected areas still
continue to live in rusty metal makeshifts. And in certain areas, like
Gyumri, there are still earthquake-damaged buildings that have not
been torn down till today.
Successive Armenian governments have promised to eliminate the
consequences of the earthquake and the very notion of the disaster
area, but the challenge is on despite efforts to provide immediate
earthquake survivors with new housing.
Still, even after the completion of the 2008-2013 housing construction
program of the current government Gyumri alone will have about 4,000
families living in huts. These families who, too, consider themselves
to be the ones bearing the consequences of the earthquake, have not
been included in the lists of beneficiaries – they are usually the
second generation of earthquake survivors with their own new families
who had nowhere else to live but these slums. Other such people are
not immediate victims of the earthquake or their descendants or had
received new homes, but had to sell them because of their debts and go
back to living in makeshift housing.
In October as many as 1,756 families in Gyumri received new
apartments. Since 2010, 2,812 of officially registered 4,270 homeless
families in Gyumri have received housing of their own as part of the
government program. Authorities have promised to provide an additional
1,351 apartments in Gyumri in 2013, but for various reasons they have
been reluctant to address the problems of the people who are left out
of the housing construction program.
Members of the `The City is Ours’ civic group that was set up in
Gyumri before last May’s parliamentary elections demand that these
families, too, be enabled to leave their old metal housing and
provided with proper living conditions. They have stressed the general
unemployment and poverty in the city and the province that they say
have reached `alarming proportions’. According to official data, an
estimated 47 percent of people in Gyumri live in poverty, which is
higher than the average poverty rate for Armenia (about 35 percent).
The group has urged the National Assembly, the president and the
government of Armenia to recognize all groups of citizens who
currently live in makeshift housing in the earthquake area as
beneficiaries of the state housing programs and provide them with
homes according to the actual number of family members within the next
two years.
Under the currently applied regulations, families get apartments of
the size that they used to have before the earthquake. The program
does not take into account the natural growth of families, on the
other hand, if a family shrinks by a person, it gets a smaller
apartment (by one room).
The civil initiative also advocates the rights of other people without
homes, calling for the construction of social housing for them or
subsidizing loans or the purchase of building materials for them to
solve their housing problems by themselves.
Karine Lazarian, a member of the group, considers this demand to be
only fair as she says that many people in her native town have to live
in huts in inhuman conditions.
`If the government could pay them compensations, their children would
not have to grow up in rotten metal cottages, in damp conditions,
surrounded by rats. I consider that the rights of these people are not
protected and it is immoral to deprive them of their rights,’
Lazarian says.
The activist does not consider the government pledge to rehabilitate
the earthquake area to have been fulfilled yet, as she points to the
general problems that exist in Gyumri.
`You can still find collapsed buildings in visible parts of the city.
These earthquake rubbles have not been dismantled until today. We feel
like we have been tinned and preserved since those times. We
psychologically feel like we are detached from the rest of Armenia,
because even the traces of the earthquake have not been completely
removed here,’ says Lazarian.
The woman cites the example of Spitak, the town situated nearer the
epicenter of the 1988 earthquake that also suffered great human loss
and vast destruction. She says that traces of devastation are barely
seen in Spitak today, which makes it easier for the townsfolk to cope
with current difficulties of life. Meanwhile, she says, people in
Gyumri have been able to only partly get rid of the disaster zone
mentality.
Lazarian, who runs a small production of clothes and accessories in
Gyumri, also attaches importance to creating jobs and training
qualified workforce for the future development of the town.
Speaking from her own experience, the 33-year-old businesswoman says
that skilled workers are still hard to find in Gyumri despite the
presence of many vocational schools.
`We have a lot of institutions that train designers and tailors in
Gyumri, but I still can’t find a proper worker for my enterprise, a
worker who would meet the modern-day requirements of the market,’ says
Lazarian.
—
See a photo story by ArmeniaNow photo correspondent Nazik Armenakyan
from last year about domik life in Gyumri
`Temporary’ for 23 Years: `Domik’ life in Gyumri
http://www.armenianow.com/society/41769/armenia_earthquake_anniversary_december7_1988_housing