seismicity
FRANCE / ALSACE-LORRAINE / REMIREMONT

bello benjamin yildiz teknik universty

Earthquake risks in France
Seismicity, the risk of landslide or soil liquefaction are considered moderate in France. Earthquakes, mainly superficial, it resulted from slow rapprochement between the African Plate and the Eurasian plate and are distributed along the fault zones and landslides often old. Their home is located less than 256 km in the crust. The file of the macrosismicité France (SIRENE: BRGM-Seismic Risk and Engineering, LDG-CEA (catalog micro-seismicity, EDF)) lists more than 5,000 earthquakes felt in the last ten centuries, almost all destructive earthquakes since the fourteenth century. It consists of 22 earthquakes of epicentral intensity, on French territory, greater than or equal to seven, averaging four per century. In France, there are on average each year a score of earthquakes above magnitude 3.5, while several thousand are felt throughout the Mediterranean basin. In metropolitan France, the East (Alsace, Jura, Alps), the South East (Alpes Maritimes, Provence) and the Pyrenees are the most concerned. A risk is more diffuse in the Cotentin Charentes 17. The last «great earthquakes» recorded in France and dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including that of Provence, in 1909, which caused hundreds of casualties and economic damage estimated at 700 million euros . Overseas the West Indies, the hazard (probability) of an earthquake is high, and the buildings are vulnerable. The tsunami hazard also exists. In 2010, OPECST concluded that «Today, France is not prepared for an earthquake. «18 According to experts interviewed by OPECST, like an earthquake occurred in 1909 in Provence would be hundreds of casualties and economic damage as important a century ago, and an earthquake like the one in Fort-de-France in 1839 would Today more than 30,000 victims.

Sismic zoning in France : zone 1: very low, zone 2: weak, zone 3: