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On Wednesday morning, there was a rare earthquake in southeastern Australia. Buildings shook and walls collapsed. Panicked residents ran to the streets of Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city.
According to the Australian Bureau of Geosciences, the magnitude 5.9 earthquake occurred near the rural town of Mansfield, Victoria, near 9:15 a.m. (23:15 GMT on Tuesday), about 180 kilometers (112 miles) northeast of Melbourne. .
The earthquake was one of the largest ever recorded in the country, with a focal depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles). Hundreds of aftershocks were detected, one of which was 4.0 magnitude.
The Emergency Services Department reported damage to buildings in Melbourne and power outages in more than 1,000 houses across the state.
Debris was scattered on the roads in the popular shopping area near Church Street in Melbourne, and bricks had apparently fallen off the building.
Zume Phim, 33, the owner of the Oppen cafe in the area, said he rushed into the street when the earthquake occurred.
“The whole building is shaking. All the windows, the glass, are shaking-like a wave of shaking,” he told AFP.
“I’ve never experienced this before. It’s kind of scary.”
Emergency services respond to earthquake damage in Melbourne suburb of Windsor [James Ross/AAP Image via Reuters]When the earthquake struck, Jin Hong, who was in the kitchen of a bakery on the street, also rushed out.
“When I was cooking, the kitchen was shaking,” she told The Times. “Oil came out of the fryer and caught fire. I thought my kitchen was going to explode.”
The earthquake was felt in Adelaide, 800 kilometers (500 miles) west of South Australia, and Sydney, 900 kilometers (600 miles) north of New South Wales, although no losses outside Melbourne were reported and no injuries were reported. .
More than half of Australia’s 25 million residents live in the southeastern part of the country, from Adelaide to Melbourne to Sydney, but the region is in the middle of the Indo-Australian plate, and seismic activity is not common.
“We have no reports of serious injuries or more serious injuries. This is very good news, and we hope that the good news will continue,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters during an official visit to Washington, DC.
“This may be a very disturbing event, earthquakes of this nature. They are very rare in Australia, so I believe people will be very distressed and disturbed.”
‘Real rumble’
Wednesday’s earthquake was more severe than the country’s deadliest earthquake. In 1989, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake occurred in Newcastle, killing 13 people.
Mike Sandyford, a geologist at the University of Melbourne, told AFP that this was “the largest incident in southeastern Australia in a long time.”
“In the late 1800s, we had some very large magnitudes of 6, although the precise magnitude is not yet known.”
He added that it is expected that “an earthquake of this magnitude will occur in southeastern Australia every 10 to 20 years, with the last occurring in Thorpedale in 2012”. “It’s obviously bigger.”
Mansfield Mayor Mark Holcomb said he was in the family office on the farm when the earthquake struck and fled outside for safety.
After a rare earthquake hit the area, emergency and rescue workers inspected a damaged building in Melbourne’s popular Church Street shopping district [William West/AFP]Holcomb told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “I have experienced earthquakes overseas before, and the earthquakes seem to last longer than I have experienced before. Another thing that surprised me was how noisy it was. It’s really like one. A big truck rumbling as it passed by.”
He knew that there was no serious damage near the epicenter of the earthquake, even though some residents reported telecommunications problems.
The country’s meteorological bureau said in a statement that there was no tsunami threat to the Australian mainland, islands or territories.
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