Melbourne is hit by the biggest earthquake in 120 years but causes little damage

[ad_1]

By Tara Subramaniam, CNN

Dubai, United Arab Emirates (CNN) – Melbourne was hit by a rare, shallow earthquake on Sunday – the largest to hit the Australian city in more than a century – that sent buildings swaying but ultimately caused very little damage.

Preliminary information indicated that the 3.8-magnitude quake struck the northwestern suburb of Sunbury at 11:41 p.m. local time at a depth of 2 km (1.24 miles), according to the government agency GeoSense Australia.

Adam Pascal, chief scientist at the Victoria-based Center for Seismology Research, said the quake was the largest within 40 kilometers of Melbourne since a magnitude 4.5 quake in 1902.

“It woke me up! Maybe 5-10 seconds of slight shaking. The adrenaline hasn’t dissipated yet…” Pascal said on Twitter.

Geoscience Australia said it had received more than 21,000 reports of the quake, with shocks felt as far away as Bendigo, about 150km north of Melbourne, and as far south as Hobart on the island of Tasmania.

Melbourne in April overtook Sydney to become Australia’s most populous city – and many of the city’s 5.8 million residents woke up on Monday with a story to tell.

“It felt like a plane crashed right next to my house or something,” one resident said, according to CNN affiliate 7News.

“I’m on the 70th floor of the Eureka Tower and the whole building is swaying a few metres,” another Melbourne resident said on Twitter, referring to a skyscraper in the city centre, reported by CNN affiliate Sky News Australia.

Someone said they “came out of the house with a machete” in their pajamas.

“Our old home looked like it had been broken into,” they added, according to Sky News Australia.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said on Twitter that there was no risk of a tsunami from the quake, although emergency services warned of possible aftershocks in a statement on Facebook.

Most earthquakes occur in the Pacific Ring of Fire, where the world’s most active volcanoes lie and where tremors occur when tectonic plates push against each other.

Earthquakes are not uncommon in Australia even though the continent experiences seismic activity due to the movement of tectonic plates.

In 2021, Victoria was hit by a magnitude 5.9 earthquake that caused some minor structural damage in Melbourne even though it was located almost 200km away.

The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc. All rights reserved. , a Warner Bros. discovery company. All rights reserved.

[ad_2]