46 years since the devastating earthquake of March 4, 1977

The 1977 earthquake had its epicenter in the Vrancea area, the most active in the country even today. However, the recent earthquakes in the Oltenia area, where such phenomena are very rare, led the authorities to start a campaign to evaluate the buildings where schools and hospitals operate to see if they are vulnerable to earthquakes. Where appropriate, they will be rehabilitated after the funding sources are found. In this sense, the Ministry of Development signed, yesterday, several contracts for seismic consolidation worth over 200 million lei, money from the NRRP.

In order to determine which are the educational units, as well as the hospital units with problems, the town halls were requested to provide documents to be able to determine the seismic risk. Moreover, the prefect of Vrancea Nicusor Halici requested that the institutions designate a person in charge to monitor the behavior of the buildings in operation.

Reporter: Cristian Prescornitoiu, chief inspector of the State Construction Inspectorate Vrancea.

Cristian Prescornitoiu: An address, in this sense, went to the uats through which we request, for now, an inventory of the educational and hospital buildings, with priority to those built before 1978.

Vrancea is the main seismic zone of the country and the one that generated, over time, the most earthquakes over 6 degrees, on the Richter scale.

In Bucharest, the first rapid visual evaluations of buildings with a view to consolidation would begin by September. Among the buildings that will have priority are buildings with at least three floors built before 1968, as well as buildings where educational or medical facilities operate.

The World Bank estimates that there are 20.000 earthquake-vulnerable buildings in the capital, and the municipality concluded contracts worth 50 million euros for the consolidation of some of them through the NRRP.

Translated by: Radu Matei