Earthquakes: is Europe ready for the next major quake?

The most recent major test came with the 2016 earthquake in central Italia. The first tremor, measuring magnitude 6, struck at 3.36 am on 24 August, affecting the area spanning Lazio, Marche, Umbria and Abruzzo. Amatrice, Accumoli and Arquata del Tronto suffered the most severe damage.

The final toll was 299 dead, 388 injured and over 30,000 displaced. The causes of the tragedy are now well known. The earthquake struck an area characterised by small historic towns with masonry buildings constructed long before the introduction of modern anti-seismic regulations. Many structures had never been properly reinforced or had undergone only inadequate retrofitting. The tremor was relatively shallow and struck in the height of summer, when holiday homes and tourist accommodation were occupied by thousands of people.

But Italy’s vulnerability extends far beyond Amatrice.

Italia, in fact, combines three particularly critical factors:
1) a medium-to-high seismic hazard;
2) high vulnerability;
3) significant exposure due to population density and the vast stock of historic buildings. Buildings constructed many centuries ago continue to be inhabited in many small towns in the Apennines. Bringing them up to modern standards is technically complex and financially burdensome.

Following the 2016 earthquake, the government launched the Casa Italia programme, a long-term plan aimed at gradually bringing the country’s building stock up to international standards. The process could take up to fifty years.

Particular attention has been paid to schools. Over the past two years, four billion euros have been allocated and 850 specific seismic retrofitting projects have been carried out. At the same time, the Sismabonus scheme has been strengthened, offering tax relief of up to 50 per cent for seismic retrofitting work on main residences.

Significant progress has also been made in the area of monitoring. The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology operates an extensive network of seismic stations and is trialling early-warning systems using smartphones, sirens and emergency messages.

Educational projects such as Edurisk have involved over 70,000 pupils and 4,000 teachers, whilst the Sicuro+ platform allows users to view risk scenarios for every Italian municipality. Yet the underlying problem remains unchanged. As experts point out, emergency response capacity has improved much more rapidly than the resilience of buildings.

For Greece, the earthquake that changed everything was the one that struck Athens on 7 September 1999. The quake, which had a magnitude of 6, caused 143 deaths and up to 1,600 injuries. More than a hundred buildings collapsed and the economic losses were estimated at between 3 and 4.2 billion dollars. What made the event particularly dramatic was not only its proximity to the capital and the shallow depth of the earthquake. The earthquake originated along a fault line that had been virtually unknown until then, in an area considered relatively inactive from a seismic point of view. Many scholars believe that it was precisely this unpredictability that contributed to the high number of casualties.

Subsequent investigations identified numerous vulnerabilities in the buildings: open ground floors, weak structural configurations, walls that were not strong enough, and extensions carried out without adequate engineering studies. Since then, Greece has radically overhauled its approach. A 2018 study by Professor Ioannis Doudoumis of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki describes Greek earthquake-resistant standards as among the most advanced in the world. Buildings designed in accordance with the codes introduced after 1984 and reinforced in 1995 offer significantly higher levels of protection than in the past.

The 1999 earthquake also accelerated the adoption of the Eurocodes, the tightening of inspections of public buildings, the reinforcement of schools and hospitals, and the expansion of the national monitoring network.

One of the most innovative aspects concerns what is known as seismic microzonation. Experts have realised that it is not enough to study a region’s seismic history: it is necessary to have a detailed understanding of how the ground behaves at a local level. For this reason, there has been an increase in investment in geological mapping and soil analysis, to be integrated directly into urban planning.

But Greece also faces a particular challenge: tourism. Many buildings in towns, the countryside and, above all, on the islands date from before the 1950s, and it is unclear whether they meet adequate earthquake-resistance standards. Furthermore, an earthquake in a tourist resort can quickly turn into an economic crisis.

It happened on Kos in 2017, when the earthquake left two people dead, over 120 injured and caused serious damage to the harbour and the historic centre. More recently, in 2025, thousands of tremors struck Santorini, Amorgos and Anafi. Over ten thousand residents temporarily left the island and thousands of tourist bookings were cancelled.

No European country is as haunted by the memory of a single earthquake as Romania. On the evening of 4 March 1977, an earthquake of magnitude 7.2 struck the country, with its epicentre in the Vrancea seismic zone, at a depth of around one hundred kilometres. It was the most devastating earthquake in modern Romanian history: 1,578 people died, 1,424 of them in Bucharest alone; over 11,000 were injured; and around 35,000 homes collapsed. The seismic waves were felt across much of the Balkans.

Almost half a century later, the risk continues to be a cause for concern among the authorities and specialists. In the capital, 413 buildings are officially classified in the highest seismic risk category, RS1, which identifies structures that are potentially at risk of collapse in the event of a strong earthquake. However, according to numerous experts, the actual number is likely to be much higher.

One of the reasons dates back to a controversial administrative reform in 1997. Until then, vulnerable buildings had been classified using a system of ‘urgency categories’ that indicated how quickly they needed to be reinforced. With the introduction of the new risk classes RS1–RS4, local authorities had just eighteen days to reclassify thousands of buildings under the new system.

According to Matei Sumbasacu, a structural engineer and founder of the organisation Re:Rise, the result was that thousands of vulnerable buildings ended up disappearing from the official statistics. “Thousands of buildings previously classified under the emergency system were simply forgotten,” he claims.

The debate remains open. The authorities dispute the equivalence between the old classifications and the current ones, arguing that modern assessments are far more sophisticated and include geotechnical analyses, material tests and structural modelling that did not exist in previous years.

But the key issue is another: Romania still does not have a precise understanding of the extent of its vulnerability. According to Sumbasacu, the failure to make buildings safe following the earthquakes of 1940 and 1977 is one of the main reasons why thousands of buildings could still turn into death traps today. Of the 33 buildings that collapsed in Bucharest in 1977, as many as 30 had already been damaged by the 1940 earthquake without having been properly repaired.

The picture is further complicated by a historical factor. Most of the buildings constructed between 1900 and 1977 were designed at a time when scientific understanding of the Vrancea earthquakes was still limited. “Everything designed before 1965 was conceived primarily from an architectural, rather than a structural, perspective,” notes Răzvan Munteanu, director of the Municipal Administration for the Reinforcement of Seismically Vulnerable Buildings. “The focus was on the building’s appearance, not its structural performance.”

Whilst Romania, Italia and Greece focus primarily on the problem of vulnerable buildings, Spain offers a different perspective: that of innovation in prevention. On 11 May 2011, the Lorca earthquake, in the region of Murcia, claimed nine lives and left hundreds injured. The magnitude was relatively low, at just 5.1, but the effects were far more severe than expected.

According to Emilio Trigueros, a researcher at the Polytechnic University of Cartagena who has studied the earthquake, the key is to distinguish between magnitude and intensity. ‘In Lorca, despite a moderate magnitude, the energy was released in a burst lasting less than a second. As it was so shallow, the wave acted like a direct, concentrated blow.’

Added to this was the so-called ‘site effect’. “The greater the thickness of soft soil beneath buildings, the greater the amplification of the seismic wave,” explains Trigueros. “If a building rests directly on hard rock, it sustains far less damage than one built on soft ground.”

This is why one of the areas in which Spain is investing most heavily is the seismic microzonation of towns and cities. “The first step is to have a map of the ground’s vulnerability,” says the researcher. “This enables us to identify which areas would suffer the most damage and to plan interventions in advance or provide faster emergency assistance.”

Trigueros identifies four key elements in risk management: seismic hazard, population exposure, building vulnerability and early-warning systems.

Early warning systems are currently one of the most promising areas of research. In Spain, systems are being developed based on DAS (Distributed Acoustic Sensing) technology, which uses fibre-optic networks as giant geological sensors. ‘If we can detect an earthquake between 30 seconds and two minutes in advance, as is already the case in Japan and China, we will have a vital tool for saving lives,’ he explains.

According to the researcher, however, the issue of existing buildings remains a key concern. “Even if the anti-seismic regulations are updated, they do not apply retrospectively to buildings that have already been constructed.” For this reason, he proposes a form of compulsory technical inspection in the most vulnerable areas identified by microzonation. “If a vulnerable building is identified, preventive reinforcement measures can be carried out.”

When asked whether Spain is better prepared than it was fifteen years ago, the answer is clear: ‘Yes, I believe we would be better prepared’. Since Lorca, all the city’s buildings have undergone technical inspections, and training courses have been organised for engineers, architects and technicians tasked with rapidly assessing the safety of the affected structures.

Fulgencio Gil, the current mayor of Lorca, also believes that the earthquake marked a turning point. “We had to rebuild more than 1,200 homes. However, only one building collapsed and, on the whole, the housing stock held up very well.”

According to Gil, the Technical Building Code proved its effectiveness, whilst highlighting certain aspects that needed correcting, such as the so-called ‘dwarf columns’, which were subsequently removed from the technical standards.

Following the earthquake, the SISMILOR and SISMIMUR plans were also drawn up, setting out procedures for alerts, evacuation and self-protection. “An earthquake of that magnitude has enabled us to refine all our assistance, warning and evacuation protocols, as well as to improve the resilience of buildings and public awareness,” says the mayor. “The current situation is much better.”

A comparison between Romania, Italia, Greece and Spain shows that Europe is now far better prepared than it was when it faced the major earthquakes of the 20th century. Monitoring networks are more sophisticated, technical standards are stricter, geological research is more advanced and emergency response capabilities are incomparably superior. But a common factor also emerges. In all the countries analysed, the main risk factor continues to be the existing building stock.

The lesson to be learnt from the recent earthquakes in Latin America is that magnitude alone does not determine the number of casualties. What makes the difference is the quality of the buildings, the preparedness of the institutions and public awareness.

*This article is part of the European collaborative journalism “Pulse” project