Big shock on the French Atlantic coast: The region around La Rochelle was shaken by an earthquake and a night-time aftershock. The fire department is now inspecting the damage.
She had the “fear of her life,” tweeted a resident of Niort, France. Everything shook, the walls seemed to be moving towards them and it looked like the front door was going to explode, the eyewitness writes. That was at 6:38 p.m. on Friday evening.
At that time, the competent authorities in France registered an earthquake of magnitude 5.3 to 5.8 in the two departments of Deux-Sèvres and Charente-Maritime. There was an aftershock early in the morning at 4:30 am.
La Rochelle is also affected
In the Atlantic region are the popular holiday islands Ile de Ré and Ile d’Oléron, where there was an earthquake half a century ago, but also La Rochelle with its beautiful old town. Jean-François Fountaine, the mayor there, appeared relaxed on the French news channel BFM-TV, although his citizens had called the city hall in agitated and worried.
Don’t panic, was his answer, you’re in a seismic zone. At least on level 3 of 5. France’s earthquake hotspots are the Pyrenees and mountainous regions in the south-east. The mayor said he thought there was still construction going on somewhere.
Cracked walls and damaged chimneys
They will be necessary now, because photos show fallen roof tiles, damaged chimneys, cracks in house walls, loose tiles on terraces and walls from which the plaster has crumbled. The fire brigade is everywhere, inspecting the damage.
The seismologist Jérôme Van der Woerd assessed the recent earthquake on BFM news TV as “significant” for France and compared it to 2019 in the Ardèche. Compared to the devastating earthquakes worldwide, however, it is weak.