The upcoming Eastern European great earthquake - Are we ready to help?

Romania is situated on one of the highest areas of seismicity in Europe, the Vrancea area. Although not as powerful as the ones in Italy or Turkey, the Vrancea area is constant in energy and the macroseismic effects if provokes, making it a cyclic threat to the settlements around.

Source: European Commission via Reddit's Mapporn Project

Geological structure

Located at the contact of three tectonic subplates, the East European Plate, the Moesian Plate and the Intra-Alpine Plane, the Vrancea area can periodically unleash crustal and medium-depth earthquakes. The magnitudes recorded for the crustal earthquakes are up to Mw 7.7 (1940) and they often have either fore or aftershocks.

The seismic activity seems to be generated by the Carpathian Arc bend, which resulted in the cracking up of the Eurasian Plate inside the upper mantle, into the aforementioned subplates. The area is still active, with lithospheric subduction still taking place.

The significant seismic periodicity is between one and six events with the magnitude Mw > 7 per century (1), events with a high level of strain rate (~3.5 * 10-7 yr-1) at medium depth. The crustal events have a lower level of strain rate and are not linked to the medium depth events.

The tension is being released nearly-vertically and nearly-horizontally in most of the events, with a mostly.

As for orientation, there are 2 possible solutions resulting from the data analyzed:

• NE-SW for the fault plane with a dip towards NW with P-axis being perpendicular to the mountain arc
• NW-SE for the fault plane with P-axis parallel to the mountain arc

Subcrustal and normal-depth seismicity ( ROMPLUS catalogue, Oncescu et al., 1999, updated)

History of the most devastating earthquakes in Romania

• 26 oct 1802 | 7.9 - 8.2 Mw | Extreme
• 26 nov 1829 |7.3 Mw | Extreme
• 23 jan 1838 | 7.5 Mw | Violent
• 17 aug 1893 |7.1 Mw | Severe
• 31 aug 1894 | 7.1 Mw | Severe
• 31 mar 1901 | 7.2 Mw | Extreme
• 6 oct 1908 | 7.1 Mw | Severe
• 10 nov 1940 | 7.4 Mw | Extreme
• 4 mar 1977 | 7.2 Mw | Extreme
• 30 aug 1986 | 7.1 Mw | Severe
• 30 may 1990 | 6.9 - 7 Mw | Very strong

Are we prepared?

Due to the long period of calm in the last 20 years, we can just assume that the energy is building up and waiting for a moment to release. According to the graph above this will mean that a magnitude 7+ Mw earthquake will be dispatched by the Vrancea zone in the near future. While we can't say for sure exactly when, we can assume that the following events will happen:

• The first tremor will be recorded by the The National Institute for Earth’s Physics (NIEP). It has seismographs exactly on the fault
• In a few seconds the Early Warning SMS will be sent to the Emergency Services in Romania
• Nuclear reactors in Romania and Bulgaria will lower control rods to protect themselves
• On Twitter and Telegram, the Early Warning System will announce the few thousands people being registered there.
• After 25-30 seconds from the first tremor, The P-wave (vertical thrust) will hit the country. Everything will be thrust up, including buildings, gas pipes and lakes.
• The S-wave is the second to hit but the first to hear. The shear will damage buildings and ultimately make some of the weaker ones collapse. Concrete belts will be put to test, improvised constructions will fall
• The L-wave will shake the cities horizontally. Gas and water pipes will be ruptured
• The R-wave will be felt as the crust will slowly find its new position

The biggest city being affected is the Romanian capital of Bucharest. It is standing in the impact zone of the earthquakes, it is poorly maintained and it sits in the direct flood path of a huge lake acting as the city flood protection reservoir. Combine this with a country in which politicians are only investing in themselves and scandals regarding building permits and operational permits happen once a month and the recipe for disaster awaits.

Over 6000 people just in Bucharest are living in buildings classified as in seismic risk

According to the simulations made by the National Institute of Construction Development and Research (URBAN INCERC) and their website http://seismic-alert.ro/ there are 6188 people living in risk included buildings that are either old or were modified without having the needed permits. Print screen of the seismic-alert.ro website.

The state is the biggest owner of vulnerable buildings

The rate of consolidation is only of a 1-2 buildings per year, allocated funds are never enough for the huge consolidation work that should take place, but the government pushes itself in more debt trying to secure the voting capital for the next elections. Many of the officials are corrupt as we score last in the European polls in almost every matter.

International help will be needed

In case of such a scenario, I can only express my deepest concern regarding the state's power and mostly ability, along with its services to provide sufficient help, and know-how to provide a timely relief effort.

If this happens in winter time, the human life loss will double or triple. The temperatures often reach freezing during the winter and this will push for an expedition of the relief efforts.

In similar cases of Mw=6 and higher, the communication have dropped in the affected areas for as long as a few hours, due to the high intensity data transfers of mobile carriers.

The emergency services do not have enough Mobile Hospitals and can not care for a huge number of injured, as was demonstrated previously under much more reduced incidents in Bucharest. One of the main administrative buildings of the Emergency Situations Inspectorate is located in such a vulnerable building so this raises the question if there will even be a call center and a dispatch after such an earthquake.

The firefighters have undergone a mass retirement phase and there are not enough volunteers to take over.

There are not enough emergency supplies in the army's stock or in the emergency response unit's stock.

I will end this awareness article with a relevant drawing of a famous artist in Romania, Dan Perjovschi:

Sources:
Written after reading a lot of articles on the subject over the years.
Huge tranks to DecatORevista for getting involved and promoting the benefits of seismic-alert.ro. I personally share their article ( sadly it's only in Romanian) every 6 months on my own Facebook in order to make more and more people aware.