Fault found that destroyed Basel in 1356

https://www.scotsman.com/news/fault-found-destroyed-basel- [login to see]
On October 18, 1356, the Basel earthquake, the most significant historic seismological event north of the Alps, destroyed Basel in Switzerland. An excerpt from the article:

"Fault found that destroyed Basel in 1356

In research appearing in the journal Science, scientists led by Mustapha Meghraoui of the University of Strasbourg in France identify the long-elusive geological cause of the 1356 Basel earthquake and suggest the region could be hit by another devastating quake.

Finding the fault responsible for the earthquake has been a tough task because it is concealed by dense forests and seismic activity is so rare that it yields few clues. Scientists using ground-penetrating radar, measurements of electrical resistance and other advanced techniques identified two possible sites for the geological cause of the quake.

At the second site they tackled, Mr Meghraoui and colleagues from the University of Basel and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) identified an active fault, marked at ground-level by a ridge or escarpment called a fault scarp, that has caused three ruptures that thrust the Earth’s surface upward by about 6ft during the past 8,500 years.

The fault runs beneath the suburbs and forests immediately south of Basel. At this site, the researchers dug four parallel trenches. They examined three thick wedges of gravel and clay deposited when debris washed over the fault following large or moderate earthquakes. Biochemical analysis yielded the dates of three seismic events - one that might correspond to the 1356 quake and two earlier ones.

Beginning near the Jura Mountains south of Basel, the fault scarp covers at least five miles and extends north-east through a rift valley south of the Rhine River, then through the Birs Valley to the city’s southern edge, the researchers said. They did not rule out the possibility that the fault extends farther north across the city and south into the Jura Mountains.

Disturbingly, this active fault continues to tremble 645 years after it caused the worst earthquake in central European history. On 18 October, 1356, an earthquake with an estimated magnitude of well over 7 on the Richter scale caused severe destruction in the city of Basel and in an area with about a 120-mile radius."