Today at 6:42 pm local time (~4 hours ago), a magnitude 4.7 earthquake hit northwest Hungary. Why do I mention it, you ask? I was sitting on top of it. Well, actually I live 10 km (~6 miles) form the epicenter, but let me tell you I felt this one! It was quite scary for a few seconds... Luckily, the biggest damage that happened was a few books falling from my shelves. Still, the whole building was shaking like crazy!

Some report on the quake:
http://earthquake-report.com/2011/01/29/unusual-weak-earthquake-near-budapest-hungary/

Google Maps! The label 'A' shows the epicenter, look for a town called Tatabánya to the north-east. That's where I live.
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=47.5218+18.3314%28M4.2+-+HUNGARY+-+2011+January+29++17%3A41%3A38+UTC%29&ll=47.5218,18.3314&spn=2,2&f=d&t=h&hl=e

wow I haven't really been in anything like a natural disaster...maybe if you count the 2009 Country Wide Snow-In and the one this year but i don't think it counts.

I was visiting my family in Chile during last years earthquake.

You can't complaint, it was like a nightmare, I tried to run while my dad prayed for forgiveness.

There was a 7.1 Earthquake (same size as that one in Haiti) a few months ago in Christchurch, here in New Zealand. There was a lot of damage, but thankfully half my family that live there weren't affected too greatly. There's been aftershocks since then and when I went down there for Christmas they had some of the biggest ones since the quake. One was a 5.1 only 3 km deep and 1 km away. I had never experienced anything like it and it scared me a lot.

How deep was the one near you? Do you know?

Luckily this was more scary than disastrous. And severe snowing can count as a disaster. Roofs can cave in.



Yes, I know. It could have been a lot worse, injuries, damage, death... We were lucky. Hungary lies in a calm region when it comes to tectonic movement, so this was still very unusual. The last quake of this magnitude was back in 1985 (that was a 5). I wasn't even born back then!



It was 8 km deep according to the report of the Hungarian Seismological Observatory. So far there's only been a few reports of cracked walls closer to the epicenter, but they're still inspecting bridges, structures, power lines and such. There's no apparent damage in our building (10 story apartment complex) but it will be inspected as soon as possible, just to be sure.

YingBlanc... come to my house and you'll feel them a LOT I live in SD, but we had a 7.2 on Easter 2010

I'm happy that you didn't suffer for the quake, Fox!
A similar quake happened in L'Aquila, and instead it brought down the city! Talk about bad infrastructures...

Oh wow! Glad to hear your okay! Hopefully there won't be any aftershocks. Be careful for those!

Thanks guys, everything's fine now! And there were aftershocks, but only around a magnitude of 2~2.2, so we didn't really feel them. As I've said, this was more of a scare than a disaster, but still very unusual and rare for this region.

Well I just thought I'd open up this topic again due to current events in my country. A few hours ago a big earthquake just hit Christchurch again. This is after they had one big one a few months ago. It is centered around the city and has collapsed a lot of large buildings and have caused injury's and fatalities. The footage I'm seeing is just amazing. The city is really badly hit. Half of my family lives down there and I'm trying to get hold of them but phone lines are down, hoping their Ok.

I'm really sorry to hear that, I hope your relatives are all right! That's one seismologic-ally active region there in New Zealand, huh?

I guess I really can't complain, we got off very easy here in Hungary, compared to others...

Yea, found out my relatives are all good. Seems to be a lot of big earthquakes recently around the world. Strange thing about Christchurch is, until the first one in September, no one would have even considered a earthquake there. Scary stuff really

My town had an earth quake yesterday, I think.

This is why I like the area I live in. I think the biggest earthquake we ever had around here was maybe a 2.5 or 3 on the Richter scale. There are also no hurricanes and very, very few tornadoes. All in all, it's pretty average. Boring but safe.

Well, here where I live, the only problem we can get, it's strong wind or too much snow at winter, nothing like hurricane, earthquake or something like that.

Hmmm, well, my place has been getting a lot of mini-quakes recently. I hope we aren't in for a big one...

You *think*? Did the ground shake, or did it not? Then again, the smallest of quakes can only be measured with instruments, and they are still earthquakes...

Those could be the smaller aftershocks...


Which area is that?


Hey, you're the second person on this forum, whom I know to live on the same continent as me. Yay for us Europeans!

Oh, you know. [REDACTED].

Hey, high five for it!