Earthquake shakes Annecy

AN EARTHQUAKE lasting three or four seconds shook residents of Annecy on Saturday night – with nearly 400 calls to the pompiers to find out what was happening.

The epicentre of the low-magnitude tremor, at just 2.7 on the Richter scale, was between Meythet and Metz-Tessy, under Annecy airport. No damage was reported.

It happened at 22.49 on Saturday and the Sismalp seismic monitoring agency in the Alps said that it was a horizontal movement of a known fault, called Vuache.

Several tremors related to this fault have been felt since 1996, when a magnitude 5 quake caused €50million of damage. Saturday’s tremor had almost exactly the same epicentre.

Sismalp said that it expected low-magnitude aftershocks to continue over the next few months or possibly years.
Graphic: Sismalp