The Varois were surprised by a short earthquake this Saturday evening, September 14. Whether they were in their bed, on their sofa or at the table, the inhabitants of the Mediterranean coast all felt some strong tremors.
A slight tremor, lasting two to three seconds. Yet enough to surprise the inhabitants of the Côte d’Azur, who felt an earthquake of magnitude 4.4 on Saturday, September 14, at exactly 8:47 p.m.
Its epicenter is located nearly 50 kilometers off the coast of Fréjus, in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.
On social media, hundreds of people from Var and Côte d’Azur shared their experience, admitting that they had indeed felt the earthquakes in their homes. The day after this unusual experience, the earthquake is still on everyone’s lips, as for example in La Londe-les-Maures.
“I was in my bed and suddenly there was a whirring noise,” Danielle told BFM Toulon Var. “I wondered if my closet was going to come out, it rocked and then it stopped!”, continues the Varoise who mainly remembers “a dull noise.”
An equally sudden experience for Jean-Sébastien and his wife. “I was sitting there, quietly watching television. And then we felt a gust of Mistral at that moment.”
Brigitte, for her part, was having dinner when the tremors hit her home. “Suddenly, there was a loud noise in my kitchen, and it turned out to be my pot that had been thrown to the floor, but I didn’t understand why.”
A “fairly notable” earthquake
The mayor of La Londe-les-Maures (DVD) François de Canson, describes “a drone of an airplane inside the house”. “For a second, the windows moved and the frames vibrated”, recalls the mayor.
Like many of his constituents, he “spontaneously thought it was an earthquake” but believes that everyone remained calm and did not worry during the few seconds of shaking.
No significant damage or casualties were reported after the earthquake, due in part to the great distance between the land and the epicenter, which was 50 kilometers underwater.
“A magnitude 4 earthquake can be felt very strongly if you live right next to it,” Samuel Auclair, a seismologist engineer at BRGM, told BFM Nice Côte d’Azur. “In this case, the rupture occurred at sea, which meant that the tremors reaching land were very attenuated.”
However, the force of this earthquake is “quite notable,” adds the engineer.
The French Central and Seismological Bureau has launched a call for testimonies on its site so that the seismic event can be “clarified by analysts”.
Tom Ferrara, with Juliette Moreau Alvarez
