The people should not believe the discussions over the Internet about a possible earthquake in Romania measuring 7 degrees on the Richter scale as nobody can say exactly when a quake will occur, Ion Ilies, the head of the Seismology Center of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Geology and Seismology, has told Info-Prim Neo. “The people should keep calm. False alarms appeared on Romanian websites in September and December last year. The new wave of discussions was caused by the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile,” Ilies said. He confirmed that fewer quakes occurred in the Vrancea Mountains the last few years. This means that the energy accumulates and there could happen a moderate or even powerful quake, but it is not known when. “The quake of 1977, which measured 7.2 degrees on the Richter scale, showed the buildings in Chisinau were resistant. Two persons died then in Moldova. A man got into a panic and threw himself out of the window, while a woman was struck by a brick,” Ion Ilies said. The last earthquake felt in Moldova had a magnitude of 5.3 degrees on the Richter scale and occurred on April 25, 2009. Victor Mocanu, the scientific director of the Romanian Institute of Earth Physics, who predicted the quake in Chile, was quoted by realitatea.net as saying that an earthquake with a magnitude of 7 degrees would shake Romania soon. At the same time, the Institute's director Gheorghe Marmureanu says nobody can forecast a quake exactly. Two weak quakes happen on earth every minute. Up to 20 earthquakes measuring between 7 and 8 degrees on the Richter scale and one quake with a magnitude of over 8 degrees occur during a year.