What's up in Europe? | Page 23

thousands of people in the large cities lost their homes and families in the earthquake. About 2,000 people were killed as a large number of tall buildings crashed. As experts say, due to the bend in the mountain chain (the Carpathians take a sharp turn about 200 km from the capital of Romania, where two tectonic plates collided millions of years ago) seismic activity is likely to intensify now and then. It is a geological phenomenon one must learn to live with and be prepared for. Turkey, Greece and Italy have also experienced it along the years. It is a feeling I would never like to experience again. For me, it was just a dramatic event which caused many later nightmares. Yet, In the meantime, Romanian scientists aided by Japanese earthquake specialists are trying to find the explanation of the 200-tremor series in Galati county.