Western Australia: WA coast rocked by earthquake (5.2 mag. is area's largest quake in last 50 years)

The West.com.au ^ | 16th February 2007 | SAM RILEY and AAP

[bd476]

A 5.2 magnitude earthquake off Shark Bay has rattled homes in the small town of Denham, 800km north of Perth in the early hours of this morning.

The earthquake struck off the coast about 25km west of Denham at 12.38am but there have been no reported injuries and the State Emergency Service said there had been no reports of damage or calls for assistance.

Geoscience Australia seismologist Dr Mark Leonard said the earthquake was strong by Australian standards and the biggest to hit the Shark Bay area in the last 50 years.

"The only comparable earthquake was in Carnarvon in 1971 and that measured 5.1 but this was some 200km from Shark Bay," Dr Leonard said.

"Earthquakes of this magnitude happen in Australia about every two years."

The owner of the Bay Lodge in Denham, Kirsty Gittens, said she woke to feel her house shaking.

"It was pretty scary it felt like the floor was splitting underneath you," she said.

"Clocks and pictures fell off the walls and at the time I wouldn't have been surprised if the house fell into a big crack into the floor.

"I took a couple of minutes to register and then I thought it must have been an earthquake.

"I've gone through cyclones up here and we are used to them but I never expected an earthquake."

Denham resident Lynne Guerini said for 10 terrifying seconds the quake shook her whole house.

"It was an incredible sound, it felt as if someone had driven a truck into the house," Ms Guerini said.

"We've got a three-storey house and we live in the centre of it, upstairs was really noisy and the whole place vibrated ... an unreal sound."

Dr Leonard said the quake would have been felt at Monkey Mia, as well as on Dirk Hartog Island.

In comparison, the 1968 Meckering earthquake measured 6.9 on the Richter scale.

In 1989, a 5.6-magnitude earthquake at Newcastle, on the New South Wales central coast, killed 13 people and injured 160.

Australia's largest known onshore earthquake occurred in 1941. It was a 6.9 magnitude tremor at Meeberrie, 250km southeast of Shark Bay.

No one was reported killed or injured by that quake and damage was minimal because of its isolated location, but its effect was felt throughout most of the state.

SAM RILEY and AAP

[bd476]

News.com.au

Homes shaken by 5.2-magnitude earthquake

February 16, 2007 07:31am



Excerpt:

"...He said the quake was of significant magnitude for Australia but unlikely to have caused any major damage.

One Denham resident reported his house shaking.

"The whole house started shaking. Crockery in the cupboard started rattling .... and the bed started shaking," the resident told ABC radio.

The resident said many people were woken by the quake. "People were out in the streets".

"The dogs were barking. People were saying: 'What was that?'"

The resident said he thought a truck had crashed.

Homes shaken by 5.2-magnitude earthquake"

[loreldan]

Global warming

[Mount Athos]

There are around 800 earthquakes between 5.0 and 5.9 per year

[bd476]

[bd476]

Not in this part of Western Australia.

[bd476]

Earthquake Ping List. Please send a Freepmail if you want to be added to or removed from this list.

[bd476]

LOL!

[P-40]

Well....this'll learn PM Howard to mess with Obama! :)

[kellynch]

Bush's fault!

[Mount Athos]

Hopefully no one in Australia spilled their beer

[bd476]

LOL!

[M203M4]

George Bush killed the dinosaurs with global warming. And then when the asteroid hit (in addition to earthquakes in Australia, global warming causes asteroids), FEMA was slow to respond, because George Bush hates dinosaurs. But Al Gore had a plan, and nobody listened to Al Gore. Al Gore invented the internet in 156,000,000 BC, but Bush didn't want the dinosaurs to look at naked dinosaur pictures (I dunno why they would do that, their arms were too short) and risk going to hell, so he paid Haliburton and the Jews to crash a pterodactyl into the solar powered tree that Al Gore invented to power the internet. Then George Bush turned the dinosaurs into oil using EXTREME global warming from the burning of fossil fuels, which was Haliburton's plan all along. Class dismissed.

Gore's next movie: how global warming attracts meteorites - we are still doomed.

[loreldan]

lol - and I mean that

[Pure Country]

Global warming

Naaaaa...just global earthquakin'

[M. Espinola]

The sharks in Shark Bay are normally in a very bad mood, after an earthquake they might be so ticked off they will come up right on the beach looking for pray.

[bd476]

I have a friend who lives in W.A. and once linked me to the live webcam at Cottlesloe Beach. The sand was white, there were only a few people on the sand, a couple in the water and I thought that Cottlesloe Beach would be *the* place to go.

Not too long after that, a man who was wading in chest deep water at Cottlesloe Beach lost his life after a Great White (might have been a Hammerhead) decided that the man's leg looked like lunch.

[M. Espinola]

The area is really nice looking but can be very dangerous in the ocean. I was do some research on that portion of Down Under's west coast and learned a number of interesting things, and on top of everything else, earthquakes. It seems if a place looks like a tropical Paradise' there is also a danger factor.

[Principled]

I used to live in Cottesloe. Used to swim at the North Cott beach where the attack you mention took place.

Of course the day of the attack it was overcast, calm, and just daylight. If you were hunting for hungry sharks, this is where you'd be. Not wise - yet unfortunate. It's not the only attack at north cott.

And it was a white shark.

[Principled]

Swanbourne beach cam. Cottesloe's is down right now. Swanbourn is nice too.

[RightWhale]

We had a 4.9 here in Fairbanks about 5:52 this AM. It felt like a 3.0 and lasted for about five seconds, which is typical of a 5.0 fifty or so miles away. Indeed it was about 45 miles from here. There was a bang and then some shaking and rocking but little sound. This did not make the 5.0 lower limit to justify a separate thread.