A refurbished apartment with an open kitchen on Bucharest’s Doamnei Street is listed on the vacation rental website Booking.com for 53 euros ($57.30) a night in February, with the catchy name “One Love Central Studio.”
One Google Maps review said, “It is very well located.” “The building has been neglected a lot,” another person commented. Great view, the user continued. “Old elevator,” remarked a third.
But the advertisement fails to mention that this flat is in a red-dot building, which indicates that it is in seismic risk class 1, which is the highest category. One on the scale of one to four indicates a high seismic danger of collapse.
Romania, along with Turkey, Greece, Albania, and Italy, has one of the worst seismic hazards in all of Europe. The capital of the European Union most vulnerable to earthquakes is said to be Bucharest.
Earthquakes arouse memories of the 1977 disaster that, according to the World Bank, killed 1,578 people in Romania and left losses of almost $2 billion. The catastrophe will have been 47 years ago on March 4.
Following the magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Turkey and Syria on February 6 and the magnitude 5 earthquake in Gorj County, Romania, on February 14, “Cutremur,” which means “earthquake” in Romanian, was the most searched term on Google in Romania in 2023.
These fatalities sparked concerns in Romania, leading to the proposal of new policies.
Attila Cseke, the former minister of development, proposed last March to outlaw the rental of apartments housed in structures classified as having a level 1 seismic risk. The Romanian Parliament gave its approval to the ordinance, which became operative on January 1, 2024.
