Attainable Injury After Earthquake – ETH Speaks of “Excessive Danger”

It was simply after half previous two when issues started to deteriorate once more on Tuesday night time. An earthquake with a magnitude of 4.4 on the Richter scale was recorded – the epicenter was within the canton of Schwyz close to the Wägitalersee and the Pragel.

It was the strongest earthquake in Switzerland since 2020 – which in all probability startled many individuals from Schwyz out of their sleep. On social media, the folks additionally mentioned the pure occasion within the feedback: Though many wrote that they slept effectively and didn’t discover something, folks from Brunnen, Schwyz and Studen additionally stated that they’d woken up. “We virtually fell off the bed,” stated one person in Studen.

No harm was reported to police

Happily, there was no harm. Because the press spokesman Pascal Weber defined, the Schwyz cantonal police had not acquired any reviews and no motion was required.

The earthquake was felt not solely within the canton of Schwyz, however virtually all through Switzerland. The epicenter was about six kilometers southwest of Lake Wägitalersee at a depth of 1.1 kilometers. Because the earthquake service at ETH Zurich reported, the earthquake was probably felt as distant as Lucerne, Winterthur, St Gallen and even Birsfelden BL, 109 kilometers away.

It has been assessed by the service at a federal menace stage of three. This can be a pure incidence with an orange “excessive danger” ranking. The size ranges from 1 (“no or little danger”) to five (“excessive danger”). The ETH earthquake service often data a number of earthquakes per day throughout Switzerland. Nonetheless, these are of such small sizes.

The strongest earthquakes prior to now have been additionally within the space

The final earthquake of comparable energy was recorded on October 25, 2020. Within the earthquake at the moment with a magnitude of 4.5 on the Richter scale, the epicenter was beneath Elm within the canton of Glarus and as that near the present occasion. The strongest earthquake in Switzerland lately was on March 6, 2017 with a magnitude of 4.6 additionally on the coronary heart of the realm, that’s close to Linthal within the canton of Glarus. Nonetheless, the scale isn’t the identical as the quantity of harm that an earthquake could cause. (let it)