Wagin WA: Earthquake ‘swarm’ shakes Western Australia 70 times in weeks

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An earthquake has rocked a small Australian city, and an entire state has been hit by a “swarm” of earthquakes in recent weeks.

Western Australia has been hit by a series of earthquakes in recent weeks, with one town being shaken by a frightening 4.7-magnitude earthquake yesterday.

On Tuesday at 5.24am, the 8km-deep earthquake was recorded at Wagen in the Arthur River region, about 230km southeast of Perth.

It was the biggest area to rock the state in the past week, with Tania Bejic, chief seismologist at Geoscience Australia (GA) telling 6PR radio station 6PR, that it was part of a “swarm” of earthquakes.

“There is no good explanation for why swarms form,” she said on air.

“What they are is a large number of earthquakes that occur over a short period of time without a noticeable main shock.”

Dr Bejic said the GA had received reports of tremors from across the state, and warned that more quakes could be on the way.

“Some of these reports are coming from as far away as Bunbury and Perth and we expect this number to rise,” she said.

She also told The West Australian that experts were unable to predict the swarm’s next steps.

“In hindsight, two months from now, we can say, ‘Yes, that was the escalation, or it wasn’t,’ but right now we don’t know because there is a possibility of a bigger earthquake happening or he could simply die,” Dr. Bejic said. .

By 12 p.m. EST on Tuesday, GA’s National Earthquake Alert Center (NEAC) had received more than 870 “sense reports” from the public via the Earthquakes@GA website.

The GA confirmed that seven earthquakes with “initial degrees” between 2.6 and 3.6 have been recorded in the Wajin and Darkan region since 5.44 a.m. PST Tuesday.

NEAC has detected more than 70 earthquakes in the WA region this year alone, with a scale ranging from 2.1 to 4.7.

The organization explained that the phenomenon of “earthquake swarm” refers to a series of “major tremors” of medium size that occur in a small area.

“Each of these purported major tremors may have its own sequence,” NEAC said.

In the past five years, nearly 1,200 earthquakes have been recorded within 200 km of this earthquake. The largest earthquake recorded in this area in the past five years was a magnitude 5.3 in Lake Muir in September 2018.

On average, about 100 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater are recorded in Australia each year, NEAC reports.

Read related topics: Perth.

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