Earthquake in the Swabian Alb in 1978

The earthquake in the Swabian Alb on Sunday, September 3, 1978 at 6:08 a.m. (CET) shook the Swabian Alb with tremors up to a magnitude of M _S = 5.7. The epicenter of the quake was 2.5 km east of Albstadt , the hypocenter - the actual focus of the earthquake - at a depth of around 6.5 km. The duration was two seconds. On the Mercalli scale , the intensity of the earthquake in the most severely affected places Tailfingen and Onstmettingen is given as 7–8. The tremors could be felt within a radius of 400 km. After that in Roermond on April 13, 1992, the earthquake is considered to be the strongest in Germany in recent decades.

Geological background

Earthquakes in today's south-west Germany have been caused by the shift of the African versus the Eurasian continental plate for millions of years . The Upper Rhine Rift , which separated the Black Forest from the Vosges , was formed around 50 million years ago . 15 million years ago, the pressure of the folding of the Alps created a point fault in the southwestern part of the Swabian Alb, the Hohenzollerngraben with a length of 30 km and a width of 1.5 km. There were other recent earthquakes in the Swabian Alb in 1911, with a magnitude of 6.1 and dozens of injuries, and in 1943.

Effects

In Albstadt around 8,500 buildings were damaged and some had to be evacuated by the residents. Around 3,000 other buildings were damaged in the neighboring communities. There was further damage in the other communities in the Zollernalb district as well as in peripheral communities in the Reutlingen and Tübingen districts . The Hohenzollern Castle was badly damaged. Some turrets collapsed and knight figures fell over. According to an estimate by the Munich re-insurance company, the property damage to buildings totaled around 275 million DM. There might have been a greater number of injuries or deaths if the quake had happened at a time when more people were on the streets would be.

Web links

Herbert Blauß: Earthquake on September 3, 1978 in the Swabian Alb . In: schadenprisma - magazine for loss prevention and loss research of public insurers, 9th year, February 1980.
09/02/2008: 30 years ago the Swabian Alb shook . State of Baden-Württemberg, Freiburg Regional Council, Office for Geology, Raw Materials and Mining, September 9, 2008.
Eberhard Wein: Thousands in pajamas on the street Stuttgarter Zeitung, September 2, 2018.

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c Heino Schütte: Alb-Beben 1978: The next six is sure to come. In: stuttgarter-Nachrichten.de. March 14, 2011, accessed May 11, 2018 .
↑ Historical earthquakes in Germany. In: erdbebennews.de. Retrieved May 11, 2018 .
^ Südkurier : Hohenzollern Castle: One hundred and fifty years of loneliness , from: November 30, 2017; accessed on: June 2, 2018

[StN-1] Heino Schütte: Alb-Beben 1978: The next six is sure to come. In: stuttgarter-Nachrichten.de. March 14, 2011, accessed May 11, 2018 .

[2] Historical earthquakes in Germany. In: erdbebennews.de. Retrieved May 11, 2018 .

[3] Südkurier : Hohenzollern Castle: One hundred and fifty years of loneliness , from: November 30, 2017; accessed on: June 2, 2018