Yerevan/Mediamax/. Head of the Northern Service of "National Seismic Protection Service" at the Ministry of Emergency Situations Sergey Nazaretyan stated today that the it'd be better to avoid construction of multi-storey buildings in Armenia.

During a meeting with journalists today, Sergey Nazaretyan stated that "we don't have enough experience and culture of construction of high-quality multi-storey buildings", Mediamax reports.

"If comparing multi-storey buildings constructed in the Soviet period with those built over the past years, the new ones will prove more advantageous from the standpoint of quality. They are more reliable in terms of seismic stability but in case of a minor error in the work, the building will suffer", stated the specialist.

According to the data provided by Sergey Nazaretyan, there are over 3 500 multi-storey buildings in Armenia and their stiffness doesn't meet current seismic security standards. According to him, about USD15bln should be allocated to strengthen them.

The specialist assures that schools should be strengthened first of all. "About 2000 pupils died during the Spitak earthquake. Only 40 out of 1 500 schools currently running in Armenia are strengthened. The remaining schools are in the risk zone", said the representative  of the agency.

He also noted that seismic protection rules should be included into the school program and children should be taught what to do during an earthquake.

"It will allow considerably reduce the human losses in case of a possible earthquake", Sergey Nazaretyan said.