A false report of an imminent earthquake in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia drove several thousand people out on Wednesday evening. The warning spread through social media, especially in the Romanian communities in several cities, police said. Emergency services struggled to calm people down.
Some would have been outside for hours for fear of collapsing houses, others would want to sleep in their cars. “People called each other out of bed to warn each other,” said a police spokeswoman in Duisburg. In Duisburg alone, some 1,000 people eventually took to the streets. “We tried to calm people down. But many were really, really scared.”
“Caller extremely concerned”
There were also many emergency calls to the police in Hagen. “Callers were extremely concerned because they had this alert on their phone,” a spokeswoman said. In Cologne, about 500 people gathered in the parking lots around a large high-rise complex.
It was still unclear to the police on Wednesday where the warning for an imminent earthquake in NRW came from. “This is, of course, a frankly disgraceful false report,” said a spokesman for the state control. “Fortunately, no one was injured in the panic in the stairwells.”
Precise prognosis not possible
Sebastian Busch, head of geophysics at the earthquake service of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, emphasizes that it is not possible to make an accurate prediction for earthquakes anyway. Experts can only work with statistical probabilities, but cannot say that there will be an earthquake in a particular region the following night.
Source: Krone
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