There are reports of damage to some buildings in the region because of the quake, which was the strongest to hit the region since the early 2000’s<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A rare 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit large parts of western France on Friday evening, with the seismology bureau BCSF calling it “very strong” amid reports of damage to buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ecology transition minister Christophe Bechu said it was “one of the strongest quakes registered on the mainland”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AFP records show the last earthquakes of similar strength in France struck in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The national network for seismic surveillance RENASS recorded the quake at 5.3 while the French Central Seismological Bureau (BCSF) put it at 5.8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Deux-Sevres department one was person was slightly injured and treated on the spot, the prefecture said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“A series of material damage was reported from the southwest of the department,” with stone falling off buildings and cracks appearing in walls, the prefecture’s statement said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further south in the neighbouring Charente-Maritime department cracks appeared in buildings and a power line came down leaving 1,100 homes in the dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The earthquake was felt as far afield as Rennes in the north and Bordeaux in the southwest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the city of Tours, on the Loire river, law student Lea Franke said she was reading on her bed when she felt the tremors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I stood up and the whole apartment was shaking … it lasted for several seconds then stopped,” she told AFP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I was very frightened, I live on the third floor … I thought the floor was going to cave in.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earthquakes of a magnitude above five are rare in France with the last one recorded in the southeastern department of Drome in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are reports of damage to some buildings in the region because of the quake, which was the strongest to hit the region since the early 2000’s A rare 5.8 magnitude earthquake hit large parts of western France on Friday evening, with the seismology bureau BCSF calling it “very strong” amid reports of damage to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1503,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,32,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-europe","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1502"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1505,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1502\/revisions\/1505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ajmantimes.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}