I live in a developing country (so don't have much faith in building codes), and have been experiencing increasingly noticeable and frequent "shaking" in my top fifth floor apartment. I'm seriously concerned.
My home has been shaking. I have felt small tremors from an earthquake before, and this is the best way to describe it, however, I do not currently live in an earthquake zone, so this is quite worrying.
The "shaking" bouts seem to last for about 5-10 seconds, by my estimate; I should also note that this country is not an earthquake zone. My home is the top floor of a five story building, that is rather "skinny" (in my judgement, something like a 2.5 - 3.5 : 1 X:Y ratio. When I first began experiencing this shaking a couple of months ago, I thought that it might have been the bed, or even just my imagination, and paid it little attention. However, over the past few weeks, the shaking has become markedly more noticeable, and I confirmed that my girlfriend also felt it. I made a query with the landlord, but I was told that there was no problem, or that it was "the wind". After some research on the internet, I found that buildings do indeed sway slightly with wind, and so felt at least somewhat placated in my perhaps overblown fears of building collapse.
However, today, I felt the most violent instance of shaking to date in the late evening, and confirmed that my girlfriend also felt it. This had me very concerned, so I took the step of also asking the tenants on the floor below, and they also confirmed that they had felt the shaking. Based on our positions at the time of the shaking, it was apparent that the shaking was felt at least on the 4th and 5th floors of the building, and at all locations, as I was in the middle, my girlfriend was on the "left", and the other tenants were on the "right" at the time of the occurrence of the shaking. There was absolutely no wind, and as it was late night, there was no construction going on that may have caused vibrations or such.
I should also note that since I moved into the apartment, there has been ongoing construction on the lower level floors; I obviously have no idea, but my fear is that they may have weakened a key supporting wall or some such.
I decided to leave the building immediately, and I'm currently in a hotel, and plan to cancel my lease and find a new place to live.
So, my question to you, in your opinion, am I overreacting, or is something reasonable likely to be seriously wrong with this building? What sort of tests would a structural engineer perform to determine the cause of the shaking / if a building like this is safe? I ask because it may be that the landlord says she will hire an engineer or some such to look into the problem, and in this case, I want to be sure that my fears are sufficiently placated, as right now I have absolutely no desire to move back into my apartment.
Hope you can help shed some light on this rather scary situation of mine!