Earthquake in western France: between 150 and 200 million euros in damage, according to an expert firm

More than 5.000 buildings have experienced "cracking plaster and falling objects", says the company, which dispatched experts on site on Saturday and Sunday.

Around 100 buildings are "heavily damaged" with "partial collapse of load-bearing structures" and 300 show partial damage to load-bearing structures "without causing collapse", she continues.

This last figure "could continue to increase", warns the CEO of the Saretec group Jean-Vincent Raymondis, interviewed by AFP, over the identification of damage "not seen by the occupants or the emergency services when 'they made the interventions'.

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 Friday at 18:38 p.m. in the town of Cram-Chaban ( Charente-Maritime), near Mauzé-sur-le-Mignon (Deux-Sèvres), halfway between La Rochelle and Niort.

This is the largest earthquake in this region for fifty years and a seismic shock recorded in Oléron in 1972.

"In this rural area, these are mainly old houses, with very limited resistance to earthquakes", specifies Mr. Raymondis.

The tremor was felt in a large part of the west of the country, from Rennes to Bordeaux and as far as Limoges, generating numerous calls to the emergency services and testimonies on social networks.

"Given the intensity of the earthquake (...), an accelerated natural disaster recognition procedure will be initiated in order to take into account the potential structural damage", Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said on Twitter on Saturday.

On November 11, 2019, an earthquake of 5,4 on the open Richter scale - a power without equivalent in France for 16 years - injured four people, including one seriously, in the Rhône valley and caused major material damage in Teil ( Ardeche). The cost of damage was comparable, around 175 million euros, according to Saretec.