Romania Marks 33 Years Since Devastating Earthquake

"I was a fourth year student in March 1977," Pop remembers. "After the earthquake, we (students) ran to the Floreasca Emergency Hospital and we were immediately included in surgical teams," she says.

Amid dozens of injured people and dead bodies, a woman, Ioana Ionescu, was brought to the hospital. She lived on the eighth floor of an apartment building in the center of the city, which was severely damaged. "We helped save her life," Pop remembers. For the past 33 years, Pop continues, the woman has been coming to the hospital every year with champagne, flowers and candy. "It's very touching," the doctor says.

On March 4, 1977, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake with the epicenter in Vrancea, eastern Romania, claimed hundreds of lives and injured thousands of people.

Capital Bucharest was the worst hit. Of the total 1,578 people who died in the quake, 1,424 were in Bucharest. Over 7,500 other people were injured.

Material damage topped two billion dollars, as over 30,000 homes were badly damaged or destroyed throughout the country.

Thirty-three years later, Bucharest, the capital city of a European Union member state, still has over 20,000 buildings vulnerable to a quake of this magnitude and the city's emergency services would be overwhelmed if such a quake were to occur.

The Vrancea area is known for frequent seismic movements and historical analyses show three earthquakes of magnitudes higher than 7.2 occur throughout a century. The most recent high magnitude quakes in Vrancea occurred in 1940, 1977, 1986 and 1990.

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