After the earthquake near Montelimar on Monday, November 11, the earth began to shake again the next day in Strasbourg. The seismologist and researcher at the CNRS, Jérôme van der Woerd, was invited from Europe 1 to explain the consequences and causes of these earthquakes. And among them, the hand of the man could not be foreign to it.

Two earthquakes in two days, located more than 600 km away, near Montélimar Monday and Strasbourg Tuesday and the first questions arise. What are the risks of replicates? Is the man for something? For the seismologist Jerome van der Woerd, invited Wednesday of Europe 1, these earthquakes are especially surprising because they arrive only very rarely in France.

"It was 20 years since we had felt such an earthquake in Strasbourg, but it was announced, in a way, because smaller earthquakes preceded it, but they were not felt by inhabitants, "explains the researcher at the CNRS, which indicates that any earthquake is followed by replicas.

No connection between the two earthquakes

However, the earthquakes of Montélimar and Strasbourg have nothing to do with each other: "There is no link: that of Montélimar is of magnitude five, much stronger and due to the tectonic structures in the west of the the city of Strasbourg is a few kilometers south of a geothermal activity that has been going on for a year, and there is no way that there is any connection between these two things. "

The earthquake could theoretically have been caused by the hand of man. "The magnitude and the onset of the earthquake are very difficult to predict, but when we inject fluids into the ground, it is possible to change the balance in the basement and cause earthquakes, it is something extremely in this kind of activity ", says Jérôme van der Woerd.

The drilling company in Strasbourg says that it has nothing to do with these seismic activities, the epicenter being located 5 km from its work area, and that it is currently at a standstill.