“Moscow itself does not produce earthquakes”

The tremors and tremors that some Muscovites felt on the morning of May 24 raise a lot of questions. “There is no destruction, thank God, everything is fine,” Yuri Varakin, head of the Situation Center of Roshydromet, commented on the situation. “Apparently, these are the consequences of an underwater earthquake in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk. The epicenter of the seismic shock was in Romania, at the junction of the plates. What the residents of Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod is a wave that came from Romania."

It is clear that the epicenter of the earthquake in the Far Eastern Sea of ​​Okhotsk cannot be in Eastern European Romania, but we will leave this to the conscience of Roshydromet. We turned to seismologists with a request to tell us what really happened in Moscow. It is worth saying that not all of them consider the incident to be an earthquake.

Alexey Dmitrievich Zavyalov , leading researcher at the Schmidt Institute of Earth Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences:

“I don’t know what it was. But I’m now looking at the summary of urgent reports from the Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences and I can say that no seismic events were noted in Moscow at that time. But the Geophysical Service is the national agency for monitoring seismic activity, so this information is official.

Some journalists are trying to connect the tremors in Moscow with an earthquake that occurred in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk at a depth of 600 kilometers. It was actually recorded, the magnitude was about 8 points. But I can say that the connection between the tremors and the earthquake in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is unlikely. For the simple reason that it is 10,000 kilometers from Moscow, it is very far, although the earthquake is quite strong. The instruments installed at the Moscow seismic station in the area of ​​Pyzhevsky Lane near the Tretyakov Gallery - they, of course, recorded this event, I have no doubt about that. But for people to feel a shock at such a distance is unlikely. (The distance from Moscow to the shore of the Sea of ​​Okhotsk is just under 6,000 km - PublicPost).

Muscovites have felt the tremors of earthquakes occurring in Romania many times in the past - but this is 1000-1500 kilometers away, and this is not surprising. Firstly, the distance is much shorter. Secondly, it is believed that somewhere between Romania and Moscow in the bowels of the Earth there is a certain waveguide layer along which seismic waves propagate to Moscow with only slight attenuation. Then tremors in Moscow can be felt, especially on the upper floors of buildings.

Such events were recorded during the time of Pushkin, and much earlier - there are records of them in chronicles. This happened in our years, on March 4, 1977, when the great Vrancea earthquake occurred in Romania (its magnitude was 7.3 - PublicPost). It caused great damage, including to Budapest, and its waves reached Moscow. Even closer to us, in the 1990s, the waves of another Romanian earthquake were again felt in Moscow.

So it would be possible to connect current events with Romania. But in the report of the Geophysical Service there were no strong earthquakes of magnitude 6.5-7 in the entire region.

— Moscow is located in the center of a tectonic plate. How protected is it from earthquakes?

There may be earthquakes on the plate, but not as strong as on the edge, somewhere in Kamchatka. For example, earthquakes occur on the Voronezh crystalline shield and are recorded by stations. And in the area of ​​the Moscow metropolis, no tectonic earthquakes have been recorded at all. The noise about the tremors in Moscow, which is raised from time to time in the media, then turns out to be unrelated to the earthquakes.

—Are intraplate earthquakes possible in our country?

Yes, there is such a concept in seismology. But this is definitely not our case, otherwise the Geophysical Service would have already reported this separately, not in the media, but in the Ministry of Emergency Situations. As a scientist, I cannot deny that an intraplate earthquake will never happen in the Moscow region. But the probability of this event (say, of the same magnitude as in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk) is so small that I can say that it will not happen.

- What happened in Moscow then?

I believe that this has nothing to do with tectonic activity at all. Perhaps there was some construction work or a convoy of heavy equipment passed somewhere.

— What about what the residents of Tomsk, Barnaul, Novosibirsk reportedly felt?

There may have been some kind of substitution here: perhaps seismic stations across Russia recorded this event - their sensitivity is sufficient for this. Our network is capable of recording earthquakes occurring all over the globe with a magnitude of 4. So they all recorded the Okhotsk earthquake, that’s certain.”

The Geophysical Service does not agree with this radical hypothesis. Comments to PublicPost were given by Oleg Evgenievich Starovoyt , Deputy Director of the Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Oleg Starovoyt:

“The fact is that the earthquake that occurred in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk was of a very large magnitude, about 8. In addition, its epicenter was very deep, about 600-700 kilometers. Such earthquakes are often felt at a very long distance. They capture large layers of earth and spread far.

In Moscow, tremors from the Sea of ​​Okhotsk were really felt - not by many people, but by especially sensitive ones, and only in those buildings that stood on soft soils. In short, not all, but some Muscovites felt them.

It is important to understand that such phenomena are not so rare for Moscow. About 10 years ago, an earthquake of similar force occurred on the border of Russia and China, the tremors from which also reached Moscow. True, they arrived with much less energy - the tremors were actually felt only by the instruments. Well, the earthquakes that occur in the Carpathians, in western Turkmenistan, are felt in Moscow - and quite sensitively. In Moscow, tremors can reach 4 points. We can say that Moscow itself does not produce earthquakes, but feels the energy of strong, deep earthquakes from afar."