Reporter 24 spoke to structural engineer Matei Sumbasacu about the problem of buildings in Romania classified in a seismic risk class. He is campaigning for all technical expert reports to be made public.
Matei Sumbasacu is the founder of Re:Rise, he is 34 years old and has a master’s degree in the analysis and structure of buildings with seismic risk. The NGO he founded is working to find and implement projects to raise awareness of earthquake risk.
He explained to Reporter 24 the elements that led to the activation of a new seismic zone in Romania, with the epicentre in northern Oltenia.
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„First of all, what everyone needs to know is that we don’t know a lot about earthquakes, we still have a lot to learn, but there are some theories and some recent studies that talk about the fact – plausibly, in fact – that a big earthquake in one area of the planet can activate faults that were inactive before. This is because virtually the entire lithosphere, the crust of the earth, is made up of tectonic plates, plates that push against each other, as a result of geological phenomena, in some areas. Some huge efforts accumulate there, and at some point, they escape.
When you have a strong earthquake, like the one in Turkey – I’m not saying the two were necessarily related, but we can’t say for sure that they weren’t – that shakes a large part of the planet, we can logically imagine that an earthquake could occur, since the plates could be reactivated by this movement.
We don’t know exactly all these mechanisms, but what we really know and have known for some time is that we have several faults in Romania – the Vrancea fault somehow took the „limelight” – but the Oltenia faults were also known, although perhaps we didn’t treat them with due attention”, said Matei Sumbasacu.
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The specialist explained what the seismic risk classes are and what they mean for buildings in Romania.
„If there is a reason, which I have identified, why we have ended up in this situation, where we have so many vulnerable buildings, where people don’t know what to do, it is because for decades, at least since 1977, people in Romania have been told to stay calm (…) All buildings have seismic risk! When we say seismic risk buildings, we usually mean very vulnerable ones, but any building, once assessed, falls into a seismic risk class: I, II, III or IV. Very briefly: seismic risk class I is the red round dot and everyone knows it – a building in danger of collapse in the event of a major earthquake; seismic risk class II is the class where buildings that, in the event of a major earthquake, may suffer serious structural damage, may endanger the safety of users, but do not present a danger of collapse; seismic risk class III includes the buildings that are expected to suffer non-structural damage; and seismic risk class IV includes the buildings that, in the event of a major earthquake, are expected to behave similarly to a new building – it does not mean they are invulnerable, since there are no invulnerable buildings, but such are the buildings that are in line with the knowledge we have now”, said Matei Sumbasacu.
He believes that the list of buildings included in seismic risk classes should be public.
„On the topic of making such information public, our point of view at Re:Rise is that all technical expert reports prepared in Romania should be public information, because a vulnerable building puts at risk not only those who own or use it. It also endangers those in its vicinity. Why wouldn’t we make this information public, since we make public the building permits, the land registry excerpts?” he said.
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The discussion at length can be found here:
Article supported by the SCIENCE+ project, run by Free Press For Eastern Europe, which aims to facilitate the creation of a unique network to share best practice in health and science journalism in six Central and Eastern European countries: Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania.
