I'm Matei and, together with my colleagues from Re:Rise, we are doing everything we are able to reduce seismic risk in Romania.
Most of you have heard about the March 4, 1977 earthquake: its impact and aftermath is one of our darkest memories. The fact that there are earthquakes in the area where we live is not anyhing new. And, moreover, it is not something we can change.
Earthquakes just happen. But what we do before and after earthquakes is important. Treating them with seriousness and honesty is a chance to become better prepared.
Today we are going to talk about what happens when we do NOT treat earthquakes with the honesty and seriousness they require. We will talk about how we missed the chance to learn something from the 1977 earthquake.
One of the things I'm criticized for when I talk about it is that I didn't experience it firsthand. And rightly so. The fact that I didn't exist in '77 is a reality I will never be able to change.
Fortunately, however, I'm not the main storyteller today. The one who will tell you about the system's reaction after the '77 earthquake is named Gheorghe Ursu and he is the hero of seismic risk reduction in Romania. An engineer in an institute for projecting at the time of the earthquake, he was appointed head of the consolidation of the block ARO, also called Patria. Terrible days followed, days in which engineers and architects were working side by side to save thousands of badly damaged buildings in Bucharest. And the people in them.
The party decreed that the consolidation interventions could cost no more than 25% of the total value of the building, but....
(00:00) It began putting a more and more aggressive pressure on project directors to minimize the work to the minimum so that the intervention will be over as quickly as possible. In fact, they were told that the main problem was that the price was far too high, but we had respected this 25% of the price. The problem was, however, to get it done quickly - quickly, to get it over with, so that is not longer visible, don’t have scaffolding showing to not… I don't know ... (00:23)
(00:29) We understood that everything was coming from the top, from Ceaușescu, who on his daily journey from (00:32) ..(00:44) ... Snagov to the center of Bucharest, to the Central Comittee, instead of seeing a capital that was increasingly flourishing, clean and swept, he saw new scaffolding, new building sites, new bulldozers, new I don't know what (00:57).
(01:00) These commissions of experts were canceling today the project they approved yesterday because it's too expensive. 4 days later, after we had accepted.. We had made the concessions that were asked of us.. "no, it's too expensive! Give up the third floor! Give up the second floor! Only the basement and the ground floor... or, at the most, the first floor, which have to be consolidated" (01:19)
We still see the consequences of these instructions today. There are hundreds of buildings in Bucharest where the consolidation of elements stopped abruptly on the 1st floor, sometimes on the 2nd floor.
(01:22) We fought, we resisted, we gave up... whatever…in the end, we found a small modus vivendi in which we naturally gave up a lot of things, but we kept what we considered essential.
(01:33) Until when Saturday, July 2 1977, we were announced that on Monday, July 4, we were all summoned to the Central Committee, to Comrade Ceausescu's. (01:43)
(01:45) All the project directors, plus directors of institutions, plus ministers, plus university professors. About 300 technical staff, the best technical staff of the capital in terms of constructions. July 4th when four months after the March 4th earthquake had passed. (01:59)
All these recordings were made by a friend of his during a visit to Paris in 1978. There is also a written testimony: some notes from the personal diary of Gheorghe Ursu with excerpts of what Ceaușescu ordered during the meeting.
Moreover, there was also a letter that Gheorghe Ursu sent to Free Europe to warn us - all of us - about what was decided then. A letter for which he was to pay with his life. For a long time, it was our only information about the meeting of July 4th 1977.
A few years ago, the official stenogram of the meeting was found in the PCR Archives. And it confirms 100% Ceaușescu's desire to stop the consolidations, as well as the reality that the experts present in the room could not oppose him.
(02:00) Some reports were given there, nobody knew what Ceaușescu wanted, but it was known that he was very unhappy with what was being done. (02:06)
(02:21) He would interrupt all the speakers, the speakers were: the general mayor of the capital, the 8 mayors of the sectors, the vice-president of the capital, the first vice-president, state inspectors, etc.
Most of them he would stop with a great brutality, he asked them questions they didn't know... in which way the wind was blowing exactly, and how they had to answer: "yes" or "no"... He spoke to them with a great disdain.
(03:24) And, after listening to them, he interrupted them, he terrorized them, he… I don’t know what the hell , he asked: "Hey, do you have anything to say? You, these.. (03:33).. (03.35) ..the designers, the directors…from the institutes.. (03.38)
(05:27) Dead silence. I was expecting at least one of them to take the floor, and then I'd take the floor to say this sentence. But no one did. And then, in a moment of cowardice that I will never forgive myself for in my life, I fell silent too. (05:40)
Here, Gheorghe Ursu tells the story of how he had planned to intervene and try to explain to Ceaușescu himself how consolidations would save lives in a future earthquake.
But how to speak up when your hierarchical superiors were present and trembling with fear?
(05:40) Ceaușescu takes the floor: I have heard here reports, things, calculations. Big mistakes were made in these repairings after the earthquake. You brought the capital to the ground! You have done more damage - you, the designers - than the earthquake did! (05:59)
The reality falsification begins. Ceausescu is making up trumped-up accusations to legitimize the criminal order he is about to give. To offer himself a justification.
(06:00) You've shut down the capital's shops, people have nowhere to buy food and clothes and necessities. (06:06)
The first myth is the one that shops must always be running. The functioning of the stores was therefore more important than the safety of the people in the blocks where those stores operated. Until today, the law allows the operation of commercial spaces in buildings classified as seismic risk class I, if those premises are less than 200 square meters.
(06:06) Citizens have complained! They came to us and said "they won't let us live, they won't leave us alone!". With what right do these commissions have to enter people's domicile? They are violating the Constitution! (06:22)
(06:22) I have today instructed the police and the public prosecutor's office that if they find another commission like this one that comes over people's heads and doesn't let them mind their own business, they should put them in jail! (06:34)
In the unedited recording, Gheorghe Ursu explains how, in those days, thousands of people were actually desperately running after design engineers to convince them to come and have their house expertized to know if they were safe.
To this day, the main counterargument to consolidation is misunderstood property rights. We see some people's right to own property as more important than their neighbors' right to live, and that's held us back for years.
(07:34) To sum up, let's put an end to all this, on August 23, the capital must be clean, to make repairs where needed... Where there's a broken pole, to do something there.(07:44)
According to the stenogram, Ceaușescu's monologue ends, in fact, with the mention that what he said there was not advice, but compulsory orders of the party, of the state, and which must be carried out fully.
The letter that Gheorghe Ursu wrote about this meeting was read on air on Free Europe. Years later, the Security caught him, arrested and tortured him for almost two months, demanding that he retract the letter. To say he took money or was paid by the Americans to write it.
Sunday is the 39th anniversary of Gheorghe Ursu's death. It was also a Sunday, and he had been lying for 48 hours in a pool of blood in his prison cell after a beating received on Friday night, November 15.
Gheorghe Ursu chose to give his life so that we find out the truth. The truth in whose shadow we still live today.
One of the reasons why it is so difficult for us to reduce the seismic risk is precisely that meeting and the way Ceausescu blocked the experts from continuing their job.
Gheorghe Ursu's story is, however, not a tragic one. It's about how the truth, once told, cannot be stopped. And about the people who choose to tell the truth, who bring it closer to us regardless of the price paid.
We owe them at least the gesture of listening to them and thank you for listening to Gheorghe Ursu tonight. Tell others his story!
