The
devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria last week and those quite unusual that
rocked south-western Romania seem to have also shaken the authorities in
Bucharest. Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca says that the standards regarding the
construction of buildings and the quality of materials must be revised and re-checked
so that buildings are constructed according to the blueprints.
During
the government session on Wednesday, the Prime Minister announced the setting
up of a ministerial group in charge of the prevention, training and response of
the institutions in emergency situations.
He
explains that special emphasis will be attached to the country’s education infrastructure
and its response in earthquake situations. Prime Minister Ciuca also wants to
check the Turkish companies which ran construction contracts in Romania.
According to experts, Turkey’s
recent history in this respect coincides with that of Romania’s, with the
difference that the latter has been spared the tests of high-magnitude
earthquakes.
Around the 2018 election, the
Islamic-Conservative regime in Ankara granted an amnesty to all the
constructions made without a permit. As a result, nine million people were
discovered as owning houses, which didn’t respect any construction standards. And
no one knows how many of these non-compliant buildings were razed to the ground
by the earthquake on February 6th.
The recent earthquakes in southern
Romania have caused panic and material damage but posed no threat to the life
of the citizens.
According to Development Minister
Cseke Attila, contracts for the reinforcement of 240 buildings have been signed
and they are benefitting from funds from the National Plan of Recovery and
Resilience (PNRR). There are several other programmes through which the state is
funding the reinforcement of high-risk buildings and 555 million Euros will be
earmarked through the PNRR. 290 requests in this respect have so far been submitted
through the platform of the aforementioned ministry.
We recall that on March 4th
1977, an earthquake of 7.2 degrees on the Richter scale hit Romania killing 1,570
people mostly in the capital Bucharest. It also caused four billion dollars in
material damage. 230 thousand houses were severely damaged and destroyed and
hundreds of economic units ceased their operations. The earthquake caused an economic and
social crisis, which, according to historians, the communist dictatorship was
unable to overcome until its demise 12 years later. Experts believe that in the
event of a similar earthquake, hundreds of buildings could collapse in
Bucharest at present. And according to statistics, Romania sees annually around
100 earthquakes with magnitudes over 3 degrees on the Richter scale.
(bill)