Earthquake widely felt across Central Switzerland

On Monday, 6 March at  21:12 a relatively strong earthquake hit Central Switzerland. The epicenter was close to Mount Ortstock, about 6 km west of Linthal (GL. The magnitude was 4.6 on the Richter scale. The event hypocenter had a depth of around 5 km. Shaking was felt by the majority of people across  Central Switzerland. However, the Swiss Seismological Service also received many earthquake reports from the cantons of Bern, Aargau, Zurich and Graubünden. The high public interest was the reason the SED's web pages were not generally  accessible in the first minutes after the event.

With an earthquake of this size, small, non-structural building damage is possible near the epicenter; however the SED has not received such reports up to now. In the first two hours following the event, about a dozen aftershocks were detected of which one was strong enough to be felt near the epicenter. Further aftershocks, some of them perceptible can  be expected over the coming days. It is unlikely that there will be  earthquakes with a similar or even larger magnitude than the main shock, but this cannot be excluded.