The tremor only lasted several minutes, but caused extensive property damage. The earthquake that struck western France on Friday June 16 will cost the Caisse centrale de réassurance (CCR) an estimated cost of between 200 and 350 million euros. It will take care of at least half of the total, which “will be reassessed gradually according to the post-seismic work, in progress”, she indicated on Monday, June 26.
“In the affected municipalities, many buildings are damaged from a structural point of view, with falling chimneys, the collapse of roofs, even walls,” she detailed in a press release. This is particularly the case of La Laigne, Cram-Chabran, Courçon-d’Aunis or even Benon (Charente-Maritime) but also of Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon, Saint-Hilaire-La-Palud or even Niort (Two -Sèvres), indicates the public reinsurer. In several municipalities, religious buildings were the most affected.
Last Monday, the Saretec insurance firm had already given a first estimate: between 150 and 200 million euros for more than 5,000 buildings affected, including several hundred severely. With a magnitude of 5.3 to 5.8 according to the National Seismic Monitoring Network (Renass) and the French Central Seismological Bureau (BCSF), the violent tremor occurred on June 16 at 6:38 p.m. in the town of Cram-Chaban, halfway between La Rochelle and Niort, without causing any casualties.
Thirty aftershocks were observed in the three days after the main earthquake, also indicates the CCR. This is the largest earthquake in this region for fifty years and a seismic shock recorded in Oléron in 1972.