Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Romanian Earthquake

Last Saturday we had a 5.3 earthquake here. It was my first one and hopefully the last!! It took me a few seconds to realize what was going on. Living in a cement block, you are forced to listen to people drilling holes at all hours but you cant tell where it is actually coming from because it reverberates through the whole building. So I was wondering what was going on and then the pictures and frames started swinging too. I was so in shock I started yelling to Cristian, who was taking a nap on the couch, to get up. He jumped up so fast and was just staring at the chandelier to see if it was moving. It was done by that point and only lasted about 7 seconds. So far the apartment block that I live in (the biggest in the city) has not had any problems with the earthquakes. It was being built in 1977.

Romania gets about 30 quakes a year but they are all small enough that the normal person cant feel them. The quake zone is in the Vrancea Range of the Carpathian Mountains about 70 miles from here. In 1977, there was a 7.5 quake that killed over 1,500 people, wounded 11,000 and damaged 35,000 buildings throughout Romania, Moldova and Bulgaria. Most of the buildings were built before WWII and were not reinforced. In 1940 there was also a 7.7 quake that caused the same damage. Since 1977 other somewhat large earthquakes have been in 1986 (7.2), 1990 (6.9) and 2004 (5.9).

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