EDITOR'S NOTEPAD
 
Ellen Wallace
Ellen Wallace
 

The view from Mollens, where Switzerland's latest earthquake hit: the Alps are still standing

An earthquake hit my Valais mountain village Saturday night, making headlines around the world (Western Switzerland hit by earthquake). I wasn’t home at the time, but the most dramatic aspect of the 3.3 Richter scale earthquake appears to have been the 250 phone calls received by police in normally quiet Sierre, on the valley floor, next to the Rhone river. The epicentre was 1 km from my village of Mollens, very close to the resort of Crans-Montana and just next to Aminona, where the three small shakes in a couple hours were also felt.

Switzerland has a history of very occasional earthquakes, so Saturday night’s “explosion”, as locals described the sound, was about on a par with the previous weekend’s New Year’s Eve fireworks, which lasted longer but were predictable. I don’t know anyone who had just made a martini Saturday night, but it sounds like it was the right moment for mixing one, as long as you aren’t James Bond.

Posted by :: Ellen Wallace on 10 January 2011 at 11:19 | permalink
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GenevaLunch, 10 January 2011.

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  1. Ozonator Says:
    January 10th, 2011 at 12:05 pm

    You may need to check magma levels as last week I had predicted an increased level of volcanism for you fair country.

    “D). Including the odd chance of JJBAL Fireballs with each prediction, with included statistics, warnings for the Pickerell Model (1/2 – 8/2011) for qualitative volcanic warnings among tectonic energy lines with individual predictions for regions are: … 3). Pyrenees – Switzerland – mainland Italy – Sicily” (“GBRWE 1/2 – 8/11”s Extreme Planetary Warnings for Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Solar/Terrestrial Flares from Human Activities”; Robert Rhodes, Supplemental; GBRWE 1/2 – 8/11, 1/1/11).

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  3. GenevaLunch » Switzerland?The Valais?Sierre? rocked by minor earthquakes/Busy seismic activity in Switzerland Says:
    January 11th, 2011 at 1:10 pm

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  4. GenevaLunch » Switzerland?The Valais?Sierre? rocked by minor earthquakes/Busy seismic activity in Switzerland Says:
    January 11th, 2011 at 1:10 pm

    [...] “Stirred, not shaken, by earthquake in my village”, GenevaLunch editor’s notepad [...]