The impact of the earthquake activity in Western Europe from the historical and architectural heritage records - Intraplate Earthquakes - page 211

was little damage to industrial installations, as expected, because most of them are located
outside the most affected area.
Garcia Moreno and Camelbeeck ( 2013 ) collected and provided an overview of the
available data on the damage caused by the 1983 Liege earthquake. The damage is especially
well documented for each of the 16,000 houses for which the owners asked for a contribution
from the Belgian State to help with the repair costs. These data are stored at the Belgian
Federal Calamity Centre. Unfortunately, the informatics structure of this database has not
been preserved to the present day, and the paper copies of these files are the only documents
currently available. This dataset allowed GarciaMoreno and Camelbeeck ( 2013 ) to estimate
the statistical distribution of damage in the localities of Saint-Nicolas, Liege, and Flemalle.
The results from that study have been synthesized in Figure 8.3 c , where the percentage of
houses presenting moderate to extensive damage is shown in squares of 200 by 200 meters
in these localities. For the other localities, the damage quantification is based on the official
inquiry of the Royal Observatory of Belgium and is given by locality.
In the most affected squares in Saint-Nicolas, Liege, and Flemalle, the percentage of
buildings with moderate or stronger than moderate (extensive and complete) damage is
respectively 78%, 100%, and 75%, while the median values of the observed percentages of
damage for the complete set of these squares are respectively 32%, 25%, and 4%.
In the localities close to Liege and Saint-Nicolas, the percentage of damaged chimneys
is reported in the official inquiry done by the Royal Observatory of Belgium. It is 25% in
Ans, 20% in Grace-Hollogne, 21% in Loncin, 50% in Tilleur, and 14% in Ougree. The
number of damaged buildings in those different localities corresponds to half of the total
damage reported to the Belgian Federal Calamity Centre.
This significant damage, which reached EMS-98 intensity of VII, has been attributed to
the shallow depth of the earthquake, the amplification of ground shaking due to the local
geology, and the consequences of former mining activity on the ground surface, which had
already affected some of the buildings located in this area (Jongmans and Campillo, 1984 ;
Monjoie, 1985 ; Jongmans, 1989 ; Jongmans and Plumier, 2000 ) .
The reports and eyewitness accounts from the newspapers about the Liege earthquake
can be found via the link: http://seismologie.be/cup2014.html . The statistics of damage
averaged over the 200 m by 200 m squares are included as an electronic supplement to the
paper by Garcia Moreno and Camelbeeck ( 2013 ) . The whole dataset can be obtained by
request to the first author of this chapter [TC].
8.5.3 The 28 March 1967 Carnieres earthquake
This earthquake is typical of the damaging earthquakes that occurred in the Hainaut seismic
zone during the twentieth century, which typically present magnitudes between 4.0 and
4.5 and are at a shallow focal depth.
This earthquake was strongly felt in the region between the cities of La Louviere and
Charleroi ( Figures 8.1 and 8.3e ) . The shaking frightened a large part of the population;
some ran outdoors, while others took refuge in their cellars. In some localities, the power