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Earthquake Anniversary: 24 years on, some in Gyumri still live in ma

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  • Earthquake Anniversary: 24 years on, some in Gyumri still live in ma

    Earthquake Anniversary: 24 years on, some in Gyumri still live in
    makeshift conditions

    http://www.armenianow.com/society/41769/armenia_earthquake_anniversary_december7_1988_hous ing
    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

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