A bottle in the sea that could make waves. UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission has said the chances of a tsunami occurring in the Mediterranean Sea within the next 30 years are “very high”, reports CNews. This risk concerns Egypt and the Greek islands as well as France.
In France, tsunamis are extremely rare and the population generally thinks they are safe. It must also be said that this type of event generally concerns countries far from ours, in the Pacific or Indian Ocean.
However, this phenomenon has already affected Europe and even France in the past. Since 1564, 80 tsunamis have been recorded in France alone. The most striking remains that of 1887 when waves of 3 meters fell on the Côte d’Azur.
The risk of a tidal wave therefore does exist in Europe. This is why Unesco has set up the Tsunami Ready program, which aims to “ensure that 100% of the coastal populations at risk are ready to react” in the face of such a disaster, explains Vladimir Ryabinine, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of Unesco, to our colleagues from CNews.
The extent of the damage that a potential tsunami could cause on a French coast remains difficult to establish, as geographer Laurie Boschetti explains to our colleagues at 20 Minutes: “It’s difficult to quantify”. “Urbanization and the strong anthropization of the coast mean that the damage will be very significant in any case. On the human losses, everything depends on the time when a tsunami would occur. In the middle of August, the frequentation of the beaches would aggravate necessarily the balance sheet”, she continues.
Some areas still appear to be more threatened than others. Here is the list of the departments most exposed to such a danger.
