Earthquake

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Strong earthquake near Zagreb, epicenter about 1km north from me, 10km depth, 5.3+ on momentum tensor scale. No significant damage on my condo. No injuries. Woke up with shit falling and flying all over the place and plaster showering me from the ceiling. Fortunately, the structure is reinforced concrete and seems to have held up nicely.

Many aftershocks so far, one almost as strong as the original quake. The impacts are sharp, the damage is going to be significant on older structures.

Updates:

Magnitude was revised upwards to 5.5 for the initial tremor, momentum tensor scale (Croatian seismologists are the source). Destructiveness in Zagreb was assessed as 8 on Mercali-Cancani-Sieberg scale (also Croatian seismologists as source; I would say it’s accurate). Location was revised to 750m south-west and 500m south-east from me, for the initial tremor and the main aftershock; it was basically right under me. Locations of the tremors indicate a new, previously unknown fault line parallel with Medvednica mountain, on the southern side. I got my information from the https://www.emsc-csem.org/  website, and it’s actually accurate, unlike some info that comes from Croatian seismologists who are talking nonsense about Kašina fault line without actually bothering to look at the data.

36 thoughts on “Earthquake”

  1. …aaaand this is exactly why I would never allow someone else to build my house. 🙂

    As far as I’ve been able to see from walking around, nobody, and I mean literally nobody is obeying earthquake-proofing rules on building family houses, and the ones I saw were all new not-yet-finished objects. Old ones are probably much worse.

    • The condo block I live in is a reinforced concrete structure, and it’s a complicated 3d mesh, seems to be extremely resistant to earthquakes, until a point where the ground liquifies and lahar washes out the entire compound. But even here I had harmonic oscillations break out bits of concrete from one wall, which seems to be the terminating point of the structure, where the amplitudes are the greatest. The older brick structures in the vicinity were mostly fucked.

    • Usually, the initial tremor and its immediate aftershocks release most of the tension along the fault line, which makes consecutive tremors of great magnitude very unlikely. However, the disclaimer is that this applies to 99% of earthquakes which are of the “garden variety” type, and this one seems to fall into this category.

        • Actually that’s the only real danger I see. Since almost everybody already has a virus, being on the streets and under high stress can switch them from mild-symptom disease to what I had, and I barely made it alive, still with heavy consequences on the lungs.

          • Too bad our army is run by idiots, it’s like they are playing ping-pong while serious shit -migrants, corona and earthquakes are happening. People put their faith in the army but it’s only as good as the top.

            Plus I can’t believe the shit you’re going through, metaforically it’s like the hand of cloud Sauron, the world is throwing everything at you. I thought it would be “easy skiing” for you and your family finally.

            I’m protecing mine by not visiting, but my loved one I can’t protect from this shit. It was on my mind to prepare, we did once but then we eat our reserves. I didn’t expect shit falling like this in short time, stores here are still empty of good canned goods and stuff

            • This is exactly the type of crisis I told you all to prepare for. You don’t prepare for doomsday. If it’s doomsday you die. You prepare for exactly this kind of crisis, where everything is disrupted. And I don’t think we’re anywhere near the worst of it.

                    • O yeah. I’ve been hoping “someone” would put an end to this misery before I go completely mad. But as they say Hope is a lady with questionable morale.

                  • Yeah. I did a quick-check with one of my witches. Unfortunately, she seems to be in complete agreement with what you said.

                    “This is just the beginning.”

                    Fuck…

                    • Yeah. I did a quick-check with one of my witches. Unfortunately, she seems to be in complete agreement with what you said.
                      “This is just the beginning.”
                      Fuck…

                      It’s not all bad.
                      I’ve seen some glimpses from above, and it was beautiful.

                    • It’s not all bad.
                      I’ve seen some glimpses from above, and it was beautiful.

                      I’m not sure what do you mean by that.

                      “Beautiful” as in “world of the afterlife looks beautiful”?

                      Or more like an actual event that takes place here; “I smelled what they intend to do about this and it looks like a beautiful plan”?

                    • “Beautiful” as in “world of the afterlife looks beautiful”?

                      The contrast with what I see here was incredible, but they’re not happy with me writing even this much.

                    • I don’t know, when you wrote that sentence it felt deep, something worth dying for, crystal clear. But I also think about what else you wrote before, how God is not a 2nd prize for losers and I don’t think much about myself anymore, but I protect a pure soul very dear to me that gets very depressed sometimes and we fight about it also, what to do and how to live, a pure and subtle soul but that feels the weariness of this world much more than other people I encountered. I always tell mine “Have faith, you must have faith!” but inside myself I think “How is this possible, a being so pure gets so depressed, maybe even suicidal?” This is what worries me in hard times, how to help someone cool but sad, I don’t understand how someone more pure than me has less faith. :/

                    • The contrast with what I see here was incredible, but they’re not happy with me writing even this much.

                      I see, so it’s not just me, it’s actually supposed to be cryptic.

                      But let’s put it this way, if there are things that are going on behind the curtains and should be kept secret, can it be known at least why is it a secret?

                    • But let’s put it this way, if there are things that are going on behind
                      the curtains and should be kept secret, can it be known at least why is
                      it a secret?

                      There are some things that can’t be revealed ahead of time. That includes the reason for secrecy.
                      However, the reason why some things are secret isn’t the same for all the people.

                    • However, the reason why some things are secret isn’t the same for all the people.

                      This is going to be a really long shot, but does it bear any resemblance to that Suzana Tepšić prophecy about people in different colors?

            • It was on my mind to prepare, we did once but then we eat our reserves.

              If you ate your reserves, it means they were shallow enough to be called a proper supply run, not prepping. To do it properly, you need to make a list of everything you normally consume, isolate things that are non-perishable, and then calculate how much you need for two weeks. Then buy at least that much, consume it normally and regularly buy more to rotate. Don’t buy stuff you wouldn’t normally eat because it will just go bad. You can make an exception with a few items, but as a rule, create deep storage of the stuff you normally eat. For instance, some people will advise stacking up on canned spam or something, but since I don’t normally eat that, I stack up on tuna and sardine cans in olive oil, because that’s what I eat. Also, canned red beans, canned corn, chick peas, peeled and sliced tomatoes, pasta, rice, some canned peaches and pineapples, honey, whey protein isolate etc.
              And when a crisis like this one happens, keep doing grocery runs and buying everything fresh you can find. Only after it stops being available, start consuming the cans. Make them last as long as possible, and keep replenishing while the stores are still open. But the depth of your food store gives you incredible flexibility when the stores are closed because of earthquake, or quarantine, or power outage or curfew or whatever. You don’t *need* to go to the store and buy food every day, you do it when convenient and safe. That’s the point of having a deep stack of consumables. Not to dig in for doomsday, but to give you options when others are panicking because they ran out.

  6. Hope you guys are safe, my sister on Bukovačka st. has house damage, and I don’t how tomorrow will be going to work to the city center, all the buildings in Ilica are really not safe because the buildings are old and with poor static -store owners on ground level messed with the walls, residents there feel every passing tram, now this. Plus public transport gone because of corona. Japan comes to my mind, only thing missing now is Krško disaster.

    • Let’s put it this way, this will put a check on the inflated real estate prices, at least the old buildings. 🙂 The owners pretend as if that crap is actually worth money, and the facts are, all the old buildings in the city center are statically unsafe, and should be replaced with reinforced concrete structures. Earthquakes in Zagreb are traditionally not stronger than 6.3 on the momentum tensor scale, but even 5.3 is obviously not a joke.

      • I know, but really even the new houses on Zagreb hills are not safe because of soft ground.
        I rented an apartment in 2010. in an old house on Tuškanac (I.G.Kovačića st, former house of Vjekoslav Majer) with three side gardens surrounded by forest and and the first thing I saw was a split of parquet floor across living room. You can have beautiful inspirational environment in the city, surrounded by park forest, but houses can easily keep sliding. A new house next to ours had to have extensive work done on the foundation. The richest people live there, so they can pay, but old owners have to sell because it’s very expensive to fix those problems.

        My rent was lower 300€ (gas bills though were high) and I left there because old houses are damp and they can not easily be fixed if you’re on ground floor. You can fix up the walls, but no, the vertical dampness comes back and your clothes start to stink. Me and my friend fixed up the place a bit, but no help, dampness comes back. The crazy old lady rented to someone else then for 400€ 🙂

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