Scientists have predicted there is an underestimated natural danger of tsunamis in landlocked country of Switzerland.
The nearest sea might well be around 400km away, but because the country has some of the biggest lakes in Western Europe, experts believe Switzerland could fall victim to the natural disaster.
Amazingly, the Swiss have a long history of tsunamis and back in 1601 eight people were killed when a 5.9 magnitude earthquake hit Unterwalden and caused a four-metre wave on Lake Lucerne to crash into the water’s edge.
People wave during the inauguration trip of the world’s first open-air doubledecker cable car system, the newly-built Cabrio, on the Stanserhorn mountain, near Lucerne, June 28, 2012. The lake and the city of Lucerne are seen in the background showing how easily the waves could engulf the buildings
Flavio Anselmetti, a geologist at the University of Bern, told 20 Minuten the aim was to ‘quantify this underestimated natural danger’.
As well as the 1601 incident, a huge landslide in Valais back in the year 563 saw people and livestock killed when it set off a tsunami on Lake Geneva.
The wave in this instance was estimated at 13 metres and researcher Stéphanie Girardclos told Le Temps,’the formation of a huge wave on Lake Geneva is possible today. The general public think that lakes are generally calm but that’s not always the case.’
In both cases, the tsunami occurred because of landslides or earthquakes, which according to recent studies is a genuine threat to Switzerland.
In August a huge landslide on the Piz Cengalo devastated the Bondo area of Graubünden and earthquakes are becoming increasingly common – albeit on a small scale.
Big quakes such as the 6.2 magnitude that his Sierre in Valais back in 1946 are expected every 50 to 150 years, according to The Local.
Amazingly, the Swiss have a long history of tsunamis and back in 1601 eight people were killed when a 5.9 magnitude earthquake hit Unterwalden and caused a four-metre wave on Lake Lucerne – the waters of which are pictured here – to crash into the water’s edge
Researchers now want the green light for a £1.5million project to investigate what the chances are that history will repeat itself, according to Luzerner Zeitung.
A number of organisations are collaborating on the study, which is hoping to analyse sediments at the bottom of Lake Lucerne over a period of almost two years.
The University of Bern, the Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences in Bremen, ETH Zurich and its Swiss seismology service and the country’s environment office are aiming to use a probe on the lake’s floor to get the ball rolling before Christmas.
Next year the scientist are hoping to add a further eight probes to help collect the data which will be fed into a computer simulation to illustrate how likely a huge wave is and its potential strength.