InternationalShirakamut: 20 years on, more than 200 families still have no home
Only four houses constructed this year
The village was at the epicenter of the earthquake
Published: Saturday November 29, 2008 in Earthquake 20 Years On
Shirakamut today. Armenian Reporter.
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Shirakamut, Lori Province, Armenia - On December 7, 1988, 63-year-old Roosevelt Papikian lost two of his three children, 15-year-old Hovhannes and 12-year-old Varsik. On the day of the disaster, 111 schoolchildren died under the ruins of the Shirakamut School.
"We buried my school-aged children and my older brother. He also died in the earthquake, on the same day. My wife was in a hospital in Yerevan with fractures and did not see her dead children. Eleven of my relatives died in the village. The December 7, 1988, earthquake took the lives of 411 people from Shirakamut. Most of the deaths were at the school and at the sewing factory. Mainly children died at the school and mostly women died at the factory," he said.
After the earthquake and up until 1993, the birth rate rose in the disaster zone. People wanted to "return" the children they had lost, at least by returning their names. Parents, if both of them had survived, had children and named them after those children who had died in the earthquake.
"I had two daughters after the earthquake," Mr. Papikian said. "I wanted to have a son in order to continue the family name. We Armenians, we want a son in the house. We did not have a son, but thanks to the Lord," he said.
Mr. Papikian remembers December 7 every day. Every year when December 7 comes around, those who died from the village appear in front of his eyes.
"The screams of those who remained under the ruins are in my ears," he recalled with great pain.
Shirakamut is situated in the Lori province. The village is on the Vanadzor-Gyumri highway, and the Yerevan-Tbilisi railroad passes though it. The residents of Shirakamut came from the village of Sarnaghpiur in Basen in 1828-29, after the Russian-Turkish war. During the Soviet years the village had an elevator-manufacturing factory and a sewing factory. The earthquake devastated everything. Not a single stone remained on top of another. The epicenter of the earthquake was Shirakamut.
Until December 7 the village had 750 households. According to official data, the earthquake completely destroyed 701 houses. Through 1997, 356 new houses were constructed. The majority of these houses were constructed between 1990 and 1992 by builders from Krasnodar, Russia. From 1998 to 2004 almost nothing was done in the village. Beginning in 2004, some apartment construction resumed. During the last five years, another 100 houses were built, but more than 200 families continue living in small shacks.
When you ask people in Armenian villages what their primary needs are, they usually say they need jobs. In Shirakamut, however, they ask for a house. Thousands of apartments have been built in Yerevan, many of which remain empty, while 7,000 families continue to have no houses in the disaster zone.
The three presidents of Armenia have visited Shirakamut numerous times, but 20 years after the earthquake, at least here, at the epicenter, the housing issue has not been resolved.
About 200 families have left the village and settled abroad, mainly in Russia. Despite the emigration, the number of new families has increased in the village and no matter how hard things are, people are getting married and having children. Currently the village has 780 households and about 4,000 residents.
The people of Shirakamut make their living from cattle-breeding, farming, and remittances sent from Russia. The young people of the village leave to look for jobs in foreign countries, and those who remain mainly cultivate potato, barley, and wheat.
Mr. Papikian said that hope for the future has pushed away the pain, and this village lives with faith in tomorrow.
"Those villagers who have not had homes for 20 years feel like immigrants," he said.
Marineh Galstian is one of those "immigrants." She used to work at the kindergarten, but currently is unemployed, as the kindergarten closed down a long time ago. She is the mother of four children. For 20 years Ms. Galstian, her husband, her in-laws, and four children, a total of eight people, have been living in a small shack.
"Our children were raised in this domik. We do not have any expectation that someday we might have a house. Our house was ruined during the earthquake and my daughter and I were trapped under the ruins, but we survived," said Ms. Galstian.
Living in dwellings not fit for humans for 20 years is unbearable.
"Twenty years in a small shack - it is psychologically very frustrating. Living like this constantly reminds you that you do not have a house and there was an earthquake. It is very cold in the winter. The walls are completely damp. Children living in small shacks differ from those children who have homes. They are psychologically frustrated that they do not have a house," said Ms. Galstian.
Every December 7 and New Year's Eve, the residents of Shirakamut visit the cemetery to be with their lost relatives. It has become a tradition in Shirakamut that at any event, wedding or otherwise, they first drink a toast to the memory of those children who died in the village school.
