{"id":284025,"date":"2018-03-16T17:48:04","date_gmt":"2018-03-16T13:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/epress.am?p=284025"},"modified":"2018-03-16T17:48:04","modified_gmt":"2018-03-16T13:48:04","slug":"arapi-a-perpetual-disaster-zoner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2018\/03\/16\/arapi-a-perpetual-disaster-zoner.html","title":{"rendered":"Arapi: A Perpetual Disaster Zoner"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u201cI don\u2019t hope for anything anymore; neither from the authorities nor anyone, really,\u201d 73-year-old Garnik tells us after welcoming us at his house in the village of Arapi.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><iframe width=\"425\" height=\"344\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/udBlM39Zeig?wmode=transparent\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen> <\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The man has lived in Arapi his entire life; the 1988 earthquake caused huge landslides in the village, and Mr. Garnik\u2019s house is located right in the active landslide zone. The cracks in the walls of the house caused by the landslide have been growing larger and larger over the years; the house is unbearably damp due to water accumulated in the foundation.<\/p>\n<p>The villager has lost all hope in the acting government but says he does not blame the village administration either for the lack of help: \u201cHow would they be able to help me if they are not given from the above?\u201d He claims that he has the physical strength to fix the walls of the house himself, but does not have the funds to. \u201cMy wife and I are pensioners; the two of us get a total of [$127] a month. I can\u2019t afford repairing the house with that money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to the 73-year-old, the majority of the villagers live in houses with similar or even worse conditions. He takes us for a walk around the village and points to the rows of dilapidated and abandoned houses: \u201cA single elderly woman lives in this one,\u201d \u201cThe owner of this house has left to live with his son in Moscow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Deputy village head Avetik Poleyan: \u201c[The annual] Arapi budget, including the overall cost of the subsidy, is about 40 million drams. We spend this money on partial road repairs, night lighting\u2026 The landslides go back to the 70s\u2026 The issue has yet to be dealt with.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The landslide zone covers a rather large area, posing a potentially disastrous threat to nearly 150 families. \u201cI married into a native family 28 years ago and have since been living in dilapidated house,\u201d Anzhela Aloyan says.<\/p>\n<p>The woman earns 70 000 drams a month working as a dishwasher: \u201cI once paid 80 000 to have a small part of the house repaired; but then the landslide intensified, and the cracks reappeared.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The cracks in the villagers\u2019 houses vary in size, ranging from 2cm to as large as 4cm. \u201cThe outside of the house is completely destroyed, as you can see. But let me show you the inside\u2026 There are mushrooms growing there; I\u2019m not even sure whether they are edible or not\u2026 The kids\u2019 covers, their pillows and mattresses\u2026 Everything is damp and moldy,\u201d Zoya Rashoyan complains.<\/p>\n<p>The locals began building houses in Arapi one after another about 40 years ago, without having proper knowledge of the area or the dangers it carried. \u201cIf we knew about the landslide zone, we would have never wasted so much energy and resources on doomed houses.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Japanese government has for the past three years been carrying out a special landslide stabilization program. The newly installed pumps and pipes, however, have yet to notably help \u00a0the situation. The villagers do not believe that the Japanese will be able to save Arapi. \u201cWe\u2019ll just go on living in fear,\u201d they say.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The man has lived in Arapi his entire life; the 1988 earthquake caused huge landslides in the village, and Mr. Garnik\u2019s house is located right in the active landslide zone&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":284009,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[65979],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284025"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}