Perth Earthquake : 4.0 Quake off WA Coast Overnight

Perth Earthquake : 4.0 Quake off WA Coast Overnight

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Perth Earthquake : 4.0 Quake off WA Coast Overnight

Perth Earthquake: A magnitude 4.0 earthquake has struck off the coast of Perth, about 15 minutes to midnight Wednesday, August 15, 2018.

Except for a few earthquake nerds on Twitter, nobody seemed to notice, with local Perth media failing to report the tremor.

However, the small quake off the coast was an unusual event, given there are no major fault lines nearby.

According to Geoscience Australia, the quake hit on 15/08/2018 at 16:45:41 UTC or around 11.45pm local time.

The precise location was Longitude: 112.198 Latitude: -31.21 – with a magnitude: 4.0 (ML) and a depth of 10 km.

Monitoring stations in the Perth metro area picked up the earthquake, Geoscience said.

The quake could have been felt by people up to 61km away, however it was too far off the coast for anyone on land to feel anything, according to maps provided on the Geoscience website.

Perthquake – Perth earthquake monitoring stations.

Earth tremors not uncommon east of Pertb

There are often small earth tremors in Western Australia, mostly centered around the Wheatbelt and Gold Fields region.

On August 9, a 4.3 magnitude earthquake was felt in Norseman, 726 kilometers east of Perth, shaking homes in the region.

Historical Earthquakes felt in Perth

The biggest historical ‘Perth earthquake’ event centers on the town of Meckering.

That quake struck on 14 October 1968, with hundreds of thousands of people in Perth also feeling the shock from the event in their homes and businesses.

The earthquake occurred at 10:59am local time, with a moment magnitude of 6.5.

People living in Perth at the time will be able to recall where they were when they felt the quake, 130k/ms east of Perth. Luckily the earthquake hit on a public holiday in Western Australia, so many people were outside at the time.

My parents used to tell me stories of where they were when they felt the infamous earthquake.

My father, a teenager at the time, and was on a boat parked on a trailer in a driveway at Applecross, when he felt it swaying, at the time thinking maybe some local kids were rocking it.

My mum was home in Bassendean with her parents having morning tea when plates began falling off shelves, they thought it was a train roaring by.

At least 33 people were injured, with most of the towns houses and business building damaged. Some of the damaged homes still remain.

Meckering Earthquake, 1968. The town was eventually abandoned.

Apparently buildings in the metropolitan area of Perth were also damaged as a result of the earthquake. Tremors were felt as far away as Geraldton, Kalgoorlie, Esperance, and Albany.

The building codes and various structural issues for Western Australia were modified as a result of the earthquake and further development of earthquake engineering.

There was also a similar sized earthquake in 1979, in the town of Cadoux in the wheat belt. That earthquake measured 6.1 magnitude, however there was no damage reported.

Update: An earlier version of this article described Meckering as “abandoned” – this was factually incorrect and we apologise for the error.