Although we are certain that most of you are regular readers and fans of the fruits of our day job, Bucharest In Your Pocket, we thought we might highlight a couple of features that you might have missed…

First off, there’s the Bucharest Earthquake of 1977 – the 34th anniversary of which (March 4th) approaches. Watch the video – terrifying.

Then there is our celebration of the Bucharest metro, which celebrated its 30th birthday in 2009.

Bucharest has its own edition of Monopoly, you knew?

Anyone interested in the early days of Bucharest In Your Pocket might also like this look back on our first ten years. (And here is some of the bad press we have received over the years).

Outside of Bucharest, we have also written about the Transfagarasan Highway, made famous of course last year by BBC’s Top Gear.

And in our spare time recently, we wrote this piece on Ryszard-Kapuscinski for the Polish editions of In Your Pocket.

In the current issue of Bucharest In Your Pocket we publish a feature on Bucharest’s earthquake of 1977, which took place 33 years ago today.

Below is a short film (in Romanian) about the quake: the first 30 seconds or so is a recording of the earthquake made by Radio Romania, which was recording a concert when the quake struck. It is genuinely terrifying.

We also, a while ago, wondered aloud if Bucharest would be better prepared for the next major quake, if and when it strikes.

Despite the protestations of some, we remain unconvinced.

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.

The quick answer is of course no.

This morning’s major quake in Haiti has had not just us at Bucharest Life scrambling around asking a few questions about what would happen if a big earthquake hit Bucharest.

It has happened before of course.

The last major earthquake was in 1977, though a smaller (and still deadly) quake occurred 20 years ago this month, in January 1990.

Since then, there have been plenty of tremors and shocks, enough to cause general panic (one in 2003 had many residents in our then block spending the night on the street as they thought it would be followed by a major quake) but none causing any more than superficial damage.

Those buildings in Bucharest which are considered to be at risk of falling in a relatively big earthquake carry a red warning disc:

Basically, you do not want to be in one of these buildings if a big one hits.

It is said that blocks built after the earthquake of 1977 are ‘earthquake proof’ as they were subject to far stricter construction standards than those built before. We are not entirely convinced by this argument, given that many blocks built during the 1980s are already crumbling.

So not without reason we think that if a big one does hit, then it will do serious damage. Phone lines will go down, the internet will not work, mobile networks will fail. We therefore hope that the authorities have all sorts of emergency plans in place for just such contingencies, though again, we wouldn’t hold our breath.

Are schools prepared? Do kids get told in class what they might need to do? We know for a fact that our son has had no earthquake drill in his time so far at school (he has been attending since September last year). We are not looking to panic our kids unnecessarily, but if you live in an earthquake zone then you should be prepared, no?

From what we were told (by a decent source) this morning, there is to all intents and purposes no real plan in place in Bucharest for dealing with a major earthquake. They will simply deal with it when (and if) it happens.

Let’s hope it never does.

If, in the meantime, you can counter-argument by supplying us with details of the Bucharest City Council’s earthquake emergency plan (or at least telling us that they have one), please do so. We would love to be proven wrong on this one.

By Phil Quake

News agencies and television channels across Romania last night officially called off their three-day search for people injured in last Saturday’s minor yet tragic earthquake.

“It really is a tragedy,” said Catalin-Radu Tanase, top news reporter at Romania’s most popular TV station, Pro TV. “We have sent reporters all over the country to find the injured but after three days we have yet to find a single person with even a scratch caused by the earthquake. There was a woman in Vaslui who said a tea cup fell off the table and left a stain on her carpet she can’t shift, but that was about it.” 

Over at news channel Realitatea the disappointment was even greater. “We had the helicopter poised for take off,” said a spokesman. “We had plans on bringing our viewers dramatic shots of devastation and tent cities. But instead there is nothing for us to report. We have tried to panic the population a bit with stories of how many buildings will fall down if there really is a big earthquake, but it seems people aren’t interested. They want us to go back to reporting proper news stories. It’s a real shame.”

Catalin Radu-Tanase is 1977.