No, not a new disaster movie, but a feature from the latest issue of Bucharest In Your Pocket.
At 21:22, on the evening of March 4, 1977, Bucharest was hit by an earthquake measuring a whopping 7.3 on the Richter scale. It lasted for more almost a minute, during which time almost every building in the Romanian capital shook wildly. More than 1,500 people were killed by the quake, including a number of celebrities, most notably comedian Toma Caragiu, at the time the most popular actor in the country.
The earthquake – the epicentre of which was in Vrancea – was felt across the whole Balkan peninsula. The Bulgarian town of Svistov was badly affected, with three blocks of flats collapsing there: more than 100 people were killed. In Romania, it was not just Bucharest that suffered: the town of Zimnicea on the Danube was almost totally destroyed, and countrywide, more than 11,500 people were injured, and 35,000 homes destroyed.
You can read the full feature (and listen to a genuinely frightening recording of the deadliest quake ever to hit Bucharest) right here at the Bucharest In Your Pocket site.
Have anyone noticed that earthquake is a bit frequent these days? . Does climate change have any thing to do with earthquake?
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That’s a scary sound recording – but did the concert hall in question collapse?
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Craig Turp Reply:
February 3rd, 2010 at 4:09 pm
No. Still standing, solid as ever.
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My grandmother worked as a nurse back then, at the former Brancovenesc hospital which was later demolished.
She told me there were so many wounded coming to the hospital that there were no bandages left and doctors and nurses had to tear their white slops to make bandages for the wounded.
My father was 25, like I am now, and he was working for the National Institute of Statistics. That year there was a census going on and he and his team had just finished a day’s work and they were out for a drink at a restaurant here in Berceni, very close to where I currently live. And he told me that when the earthquake started nobody knew in what direction to run to make it to the door. And the bar came down and tables and chandeleers came down on the people and when it finally ended, my father managed to come out from under the rubble and he only had a broken rib.
Back then my family was living in a house in the Piata Norilor area, close to Tineretului metro station. And in that evening at home were my grandmother (which was later urgently called at the hostpital), my grandfather who was a policeman, my aunt and uncle (who both died many years ago) and two great-grandfathers of mine who came in visit. And my aunt told me many years ago that when the earthquake started, it felt first like a vertical movement and after the first moment a horizontal movement began, the lights went off and hell broke loose. One of my great-granfathers kept shouting “where’s the exit”, he didn’t know the house too well and it was dark and there was also the earthquake making him disoriented and my uncle kept shouting “don’t worry, don’t worry the house is made of wood, it won’t fall” so as to calm everyone down.
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