If Spitak Earthquake Hit Yerevan, 80% of Buildings Would Collapse: Study

“We have [inherited] a terribly heavy legacy which came from the Soviet Union through those buildings in which today we live and work,” said Armenian Seismic-Resistant Construction Association President Mikael Melkumyan, speaking about the earthquake which took place in Armenia 22 years ago today. 

According to the specialist, the Armenian government wasn’t interested in investing huge costs into building seismic-resistant buildings in Armenia. In Melkumyan’s opinion, today’s Armenia must also think about the seismic safety.

“Our norms are quite good. If we build according to these norms, then we’ll have reliable buildings,” he said, adding that buildings built during the Soviet Union were built according to the norms at that time, where the seismic threat was underestimated.

Noting that majority of the country’s population lives in Yerevan, Melkumyan said, “Densely populated, densely constructed center, in which there is generally no place to build.” He urged Yerevan residents to live away from the city center, since there, according to the specialist, is the most dangerous area in terms of seismic resistance.

Speaking to journalists today, Melkumyan outlined the results of research he and a group of specialists conducted which noted that 80% of the buildings in the Armenian capital would collapse if an earthquake measuring the same as that of the 1988 Spitak earthquake (6.9 on the Richter scale) were to happen. 

Asked by a journalist why, for example, high-rise buildings are allowed to be constructed on a 15 square meter area, Melkumyan named the highest level of corruption as the reason. “Construction is a business today; we live in a time of savage capitalism. When one segment is in the process of constantly obtaining wealth and the other segment, [lives in] constant poverty.”

The specialist also underlined the importance of the need to pay attention to strengthening schools, hospitals and government buildings:

“Today the Ministry of Emergency Situations is sitting in a building which is Naf-Naf’s house of today [referring to one of the three little pigs in the famous fairy tale whose house was blown down by the wolf] from the point of seismic danger. There’s an earthquake, [the building] collapses: [then] who’s going to govern that? Or who’s going to govern if there was an earthquake and our government buildings collapse?”