Damaged building in Melbourne, Australia, on 22 September after a 5.9 magnitude earthquake
WILLIAM WEST/AFP via Getty Images
The state of Victoria, Australia, experienced its most powerful onshore earthquake recorded on 22 September, causing damage to buildings but fortunately no serious injuries.
The earthquake, with a magnitude of 5.9, occurred at 9:15am local time, according to Geoscience Australia. Its epicenter was in the Alpine National Park, approximately 120 kilometers east of Melbourne. The depth of the earthquake was shallow, at around 10 kilometers.
Residents of Melbourne, who are currently under a COVID-19 lockdown, reported feeling the ground shake for about 15 to 20 seconds. Tremors were also felt in Canberra, located over 300 kilometers northeast of the epicenter.
While a small number of buildings in Melbourne suffered partial collapses, and power outages occurred in some parts of the city, there have been no reports of major damage or serious injuries.
This fortunate outcome can be attributed to the epicenter being in a relatively remote area, according to Dee Ninis of the Seismology Research Centre in Melbourne. “We’re really lucky it wasn’t in a populated area,” she states.
Australia experiences relatively few earthquakes due to its location in the middle of a tectonic plate, explains Meghan Miller from the Australian National University. Miller points out that countries like New Zealand, Indonesia, and Japan are more prone to earthquakes because they lie on plate boundaries. However, it is a common misconception that earthquakes do not occur in Australia.
Newcastle in New South Wales experienced one of Australia’s worst earthquakes in 1989, with a magnitude of 5.6. This earthquake caused extensive damage and resulted in 13 fatalities.
According to Phil Cummins, also from the Australian National University, earthquakes occur in Australia when the tectonic plate it sits on rubs against others, gradually transmitting stress through the plate. Eventually, this leads to a pressure build-up that causes a fault within the plate to rupture.
A similar region of Victoria experienced a magnitude 5.7 earthquake in 1966, suggesting that it may be prone to rupturing when stress gradually builds up.
A magnitude 4.1 aftershock was recorded 15 minutes after the morning’s earthquake, but Cummins expects that there will be no more significant aftershocks. The Bureau of Meteorology has also confirmed that there is no risk of a tsunami.
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