Earthquake in Romania on September 24, 2016

by on 29. September 2016 with No Comments

On September 24, 2016 at 02:11 local time, the Central Romania region was hit by an earthquake with magnitude 5.3. The epicenter of earthquake was in the Vrancea region, 150 km north of Bucharest in depth 92 km (source of information: romanian seismological service).

Earthquakes in this region are quite often. The Vrancea region is the most active seismic zone in the whole Carpathian arc. Some strong earthquakes with fatal consequences occurred there in the past, causing death of many people (Table). This area is characteristic with deep earthquakes, ranging to depth more than 150 km.

List of the most devastating earthquakes in the Vrancea region, with deaths casualties known (source: www.emsc-csem.org).

Date Magnitude Deaths
1838-01-23 6,9 42
1940-11-10 7,3 1000
1977-03-04 7,2 1581

 

The earthquake from September 24, 2016, is visible also on seismic records from seismic stations of the National Network of Seismic Stations (NNSS) operated by the Earth Science Institute SAS (Fig. 1-2). First automatic localization of the earthquake epicenter and magnitude estimation (Fig. 3.) based on seismic records from NNSS were available several minutes after seismic waves arrival. These first estimations correlate very good with the final earthquake parameters provided by the International Seismological Data Center CSEM-EMSC.

Fig. 1: Seismic records of the earthquake from September 24, 2016, from the seismic stations of NNSS. Arrivals of the P and S seismic waves are indicated on the records.
Fig. 1: Seismic records of the earthquake from September 24, 2016, from the seismic stations of NNSS. Arrivals of the P and S seismic waves are indicated on the records.
Fig. 2: Seismic record from the seismic station Červenica in detail.
Fig. 2: Seismic record from the seismic station Červenica in detail.
Fig. 3: Results of the first automatic processing of the data from NNSS and data of the Virtual Network of Seismic Stations of the Department of Seismology of Earth Science Institute SAS (seismic stations of the Local Network Eastern Slovakia and chosen seismic stations of cooperating institutions from Slovakia and abroad).
Fig. 3: Results of the first automatic processing of the data from NNSS and data of the Virtual Network of Seismic Stations of the Department of Seismology of Earth Science Institute SAS (seismic stations of the Local Network Eastern Slovakia and chosen seismic stations of cooperating institutions from Slovakia and abroad).