LOOKING FOR TRACES OF THE 18 SEPTEMBER 1692

EARTHQUAKE
EXCURSION GUIDE 18/09/2009
Prepared by Thierry Camelbeeck and Thomas Lecocq (Royal Observatory of
Belgium)
The 18 September 1692 earthquake
The strongest known seismic event in Western Europe north of the Alps occurred on 18
September 1692 approximately at 14:15 (local time) in the bordering region between Belgium,
The Netherlands and Germany. The earthquake produced significant destructions in the
northern part of the Belgian Ardenne and caused widespread damage from Kent in England to
the Rhineland in Germany and to Champagne in France.
The knowledge of the 18 September 1692 has greatly improved during the last ten years by
the numerous new documents found in different record-offices in Belgium, Germany, The
Netherlands and France. Based on these new data, Alexandre et al. (2008) proposed a new
macroseismic map in terms of the EMS-98 macroseismic scale, from which, it is suggested a
better epicenter location, than in previous investigations, within the area of Verviers-SoironHerve-Montzen. However this conclusion should be revisited in the light of possible new
discoveries in the archives for localities in the Belgian Ardenne and the Eifel mountains.
With a magnitude between 6 and 6 , it is the largest known historic earthquake which
occurred in Northwest Europe.

Figure 1. Epicentre area of the 1692 Verviers earthquake

This earthquake is one of the unique examples of a large earthquake in Western Europe. The
contemporary accounts provide descriptions of very heavy damage and destructions on a large
area, which is exceptional in the historical seismicity of the region. During the recent years,
attention has also been paid to identify traces of the seismic activity in the architectural
heritage (Barszez et al., 2009) with the purpose of better constrain the potential of destruction
of future large earthquakes in our region and to furnish more information of past strong
earthquakes.
At the first stop of this excursion, we will provide an example of the methodologies in
development to assess the impact of earthquakes in the architectural heritage by presenting the
case study of the village of Soiron.
From the seismic hazards and risks point of view, it is important to study the destructive past
earthquakes and their seismotectonic framework. Evaluating the permanency of such
earthquake activity can only be done by identifying the geological structures that have
generated such large seismic events and studying their tectonic activity rate. Since more than
ten years different investigations have been conducted to evidenced possible active faults in
the epicentre area of the 1692 earthquake. The two following stops will be devoted to this
problematic

Traces of the 1692 earthquake in the architectural heritage:

the case study of Soiron (Stop 1: presentation by Herv Dege (ULg)
and Thierry Camelbeeck (ROB)
Two historical sources contemporaneous of the earthquake report its effects in Soiron.
[Servais Ronval, Notes du Registre paroissial de Soiron, ed. by Graindor M (1964) La Vie
quotidienne Soiron au temps jadis, Olne, pp 178] : tremblement de terre espouvantable qui
a abbatu les maisons, chemines dont les miennes lont est et le chasteau de Soiron gast et
irrparable .et, fait fait quil savanoit on voyait hausser la surface de la terre, en
sorte que plusieurs personnes et animaux en furent culbutez .
[Nicolas Ignace de Woelmont, Histoire de la maison de Woelmont, excerpts ed. by Graindor
(1968) : L'Avouerie et les anciens seigneurs de Soiron, vol 2, La maison de Woelmont,
Verviers, pp 129] : .dont la secousse fut si grande quelle renversat la vieille tour du
chasteau de Soiron et dlabrat tellement les autres difices quils sont irparables et je fus
oblig davoir toute sorte douvriers pendant six sepmaines pour les appuyer et rapicer, faute
de quoy, ils seroyent assurment tombs.. .
The account notices substantial to very heavy damage for the houses and perhaps destruction.
The owner of the castle provides detailed information about its heavy damage.
The church was also strongly damaged. A new one was rebuilt from 1723 to 1725, except the
tower. The descriptions correspond at least to intensity VIII and it is not impossible that
intensity could be IX (EMS-98 intensity scale).
Two different studies have been undertaken to evaluate the damage caused in Soiron by the
1692 earthquake. The first concerns the study of the different repairing traces in the tower of
the church to establish if they can be originated by the earthquake (Gerardy, 2009). The
second one is conducting by the Dpartement of Architecture of the Polytechnic Faculty of
Mons in cooperation with the Royal Observatory of Belgium and concerns the houses of the
village center.

Figure 2. Tower of the Soiron church: observations of disturbances and repairs

Figure 3. Stress concentration generated by shear action on the tower of the Soiron church

Morphological expression of faulting along the Hockay

fault zone
STOP 2: Wesny (presentation by Alain Demoulin (ULg) and Thierry Camelbeeck (ROB)
The analysis of the DEM and the aerial photographs of the northern part of the Belgian
Ardenne evidenced some lineaments or structures that could be related with faults. The
clearest break in slope in a NNW-SSE direction that can be traced over several kilometers is
located 1.5 km east of the centre of Verviers and is called the Verviers scarp (Fig. 4). This
lineament is 7.5 km long, has an azimuth of 150 with a slight curve to a NW-SE orientation
towards the south, and is sloping to the west. The Verviers scarp was first recognized by
Demoulin as a possible active fault (2006). At both sides of the Vesdre, the general view of
the scarp is defined by the highest terrace at the supposed footwall (terrace Hombiet and Haut
Tombeux S), which seems to connect with a high terrace of the supposed hanging wall
(Ottomont W and Linaigrettes), which is approximately 32 meters lower. We doubt that these
terraces in the footwall and hanging wall belong to the same terrace level and thus the height
difference cannot be interpreted as cumulative vertical fault movement.

Figure 4: Digital Elevation Model of the studied area with indication of some structural
elements, discussed during the excursion. The red stars indicate the epicentre of the 19891990 seismic sequence. The three stops of the excursion are indicated in red.
In a broader geostructural view, and based on the 1/25000 scale geological map of FlronVerviers, the scarp coincides with the Verviers fault. This fault is well traceable on the

geological map with lithological contacts defining some hundreds of meters of vertical (west
dipping) and horizontal (sinistral) offset. The geomorphologic expression gets less clear
towards the north, but around Battice, 7 km north of Verviers, the supposed prolongation of
the Verviers fault is better known as the Ostend fault. This fault is the eastern border fault of
the Graben de la Minerie, a geologic structure evidenced by mining activities in the last
century. These mining studies revealed that the Ostend fault is a sinistral oblique fault
displacing Westphalian sediments 300 m horizontally and 48 m vertically (dipping to the
west).
STOP 3: crte de la Vecque (presentation by Thomas Lecocq and Thierry Camelbeeck
(ROB)
Southwards, the Hockai faulted zone (HFZ), which is located 5 km southwest of the Botrange,
i.e. the highest point of Belgium, lies on first sight roughly in the prolongation of the traced
Verviers scarp. The HFZ was first recognized by Ahorner (1983) as a seismically active
structure by epicentre alignment of registered earthquakes. From 30 September 1989 until 16
April 1990, a seismic swarm with more than 400 micro-earthquakes struck the region. This
seismic swarm was measured by a mobile network of 4 stations and the permanent Belgian
seismic network (Camelbeeck 1993). The spatial repartition of the hypocentres of 92 well
locatedevents of the sequence represents a fault plane with an azimuth of 330 and a dip of
70 to the east, which is opposite to the Verviers fault scarp. Most of the fault plane solutions
are also in good agreement with this fault orientation and are indicative for a sinistral strike
slip fault with a minor normal component dipping to the east.
On the DEM and aerial photographs, we could observe a NNW-SSE lineament approximately
2.5 km west of the earthquake swarm around Baronh at the Crte de la Vecque, an
Oligocene denudation surface, which is now a high ridge of 565 meters in altitude. The
lineament is characterized by a gentle slope to the east and a more important sinistral
component that displaces the Crte de la Vecque 100 m laterally. This scarp could
correspond with the upward prolongation of the fault that was inferred from the seismic
swarm. Further evidence of the existence of the HFZ can be found in the NNW-SSE
orientation of the upper stream of the Hoegne, which seems to be influenced by the HFZ by
its orientation and by the fact that and the place where it cuts through the Crte de la Vecque.
The geomorphologic evidence to connect the Verviers scarp with the HFZ in the south is not
that convincing, considering also the opposite dip of the both faults, but they can be regarded
as belonging to the same geostructural zone with a more important sinistral component.

REFERENCES
AHORNER Ldwig. (1983). Historical seismicity and present-day micro-earthquake activity
of the Rhenish Massif, Central Europe. In Plateau Uplift, K Fuchs et al. (editors),
Springerverslag, Berlin, 198-221.
ALEXANDRE Pierre, KUSMAN David, PETERMANS and CAMELBEECK Thierry (2008).The 18
September 1692 earthquake in the Belgian Ardenne and its aftershocks. Modern Approaches in Solid
Earth Sciences - Historical Seismology: interdisciplinary studies of past and recent earthquakes 209230.

BARSZEZ Anne-Marie, PHILIPRONT Amlie, CAMELBEECK Thierry et SABBE Alain

(2009). Comment dceler lorigine sismique de certains dsordres affectant le patrimoine
architectural et comment y remdier ? Les cahiers de lUrbanisme, 71, 86-92.
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fin dtudes master en Ingnieur Civil des constructions lUniversit de Lige (promoteur :
Herv Dege).