Guardian on Armenian Earthquake in 1988: Some People Haven't Overcome Shock Yet

PanARMENIAN.Net - Jonathan Steele, a reporter of The Guardian published an article about the Spitak earthquake and the current situation in the calamity zone. Seventeen years ago, Armenia suffered an earthquake similar in scale to that which struck Pakistan in October 2005. Jonathan Steele, who visited the calamity zone immediately after the earthquake presented the events of those days in detail and the history of the reconstruction of the ruined towns. "Last week I was in Leninakan again, to discover how a community recovers from a tragedy of this magnitude. What lessons could Pakistan learn from Armenia's sputtering reconstruction process, which, 17 years later, has 3,500 families in the city still living in "temporary accommodation" - a euphemism for shacks, metal containers and disused railway wagons?" Steele writes. "It's not just Pakistan which has to think this through. So does New Orleans," says Steve Anlian, director of the Armenian branch of the Urban Institute, a Washington-based thinktank, which devised the US government's earthquake recovery program. "The big change for Gyumri came in 1998 when the multibillionaire Armenian-American, Kirk Kerkorian, then owner of Metro Goldwyn Mayer and several Las Vegas casinos, stepped in. Kerkorian picked up where the Soviets left off. In the vast suburb to the northwest of Gyumri, where the "carcasses" stand, he added a colony of four-storey blocks of pink tufa to rehouse several hundred families in high-quality flats. Two years later, USAID (the United States Agency for International Development) arrived. Adopting a strategy recommended by the World Bank, it invoked market principles as much as charity. It gave needy families vouchers called housing purchase certificates," the article says. The author also noted that many people haven't overcome shock yet and need psychological help while unemployment remains the major problem in Gyumri, since only 2 out of 46 enterprises function in the town at present.