2023-06-17 05:06:00
A resident of Niort had “the scare of her life”: a “very strong” earthquake frightened the population of a large part of the west of the country on Friday evening, without causing major damage according to the authorities.
With a magnitude of 5.3 to 5.8 according to the National Seismic Monitoring Network (Renass) and the French Central Seismological Bureau (BCSF), the violent tremor occurred at 6:38 p.m. in the town of Cram-Chaban (Charente -Maritime), near Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon (Deux-Sèvres), halfway between La Rochelle and Niort.
From Bordeaux to Rennes via Limoges or La Rochelle, many residents felt the earth shake and multiplied calls for firefighters.
In Tours, Léa Franke, a law student, was reading a book on her bed when she was suddenly “very scared”.
In mainland France, the last earthquake with a magnitude greater than 5 dates back to 2019 in the Drôme.
“In the region, the last of a fairly similar magnitude dates back to 1972 in Oléron. So for the region of the great west, it is really an important event”, he underlined, adding that some aftershocks had been detected. .
“More fear than harm”
In Deux-Sèvres, “a lightly injured person was taken care of by the emergency services”, according to a report from the prefecture which reports material damage to buildings, mainly cracks and falling stones, such as that of Charente- Maritime, where no casualties were recorded by the emergency services.
On the other hand, more than a thousand homes were without electricity in this department at the start of the evening, a high voltage line having been affected according to the authorities.
These home inspections were to continue throughout the night with the reinforcement of building experts from neighboring departments.
In Tours, Charline Verdun, a 26-year-old student nurse who lives on the 8th floor of a building, was sitting on her balcony at the time of the tremor.
“It was impressive. I wondered what it could be. An earthquake, I had never experienced one. I didn’t really understand, I thought I was hallucinating,” she said.
On the Ile de Ré, Marianne Kleip was with her four children “when the sofa vibrated”.
“The neighbors didn’t understand, they thought it was a truck. My children no longer dared to enter the house. In the end, it’s more fear than harm.”
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