Earthquake in the UK

scojones

Article taken from http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,70131-1263216,00.html

skynews wrote:

Earthquake Shakes Southern England
Updated: 09:33, Saturday April 28, 2007

An earthquake with a magnitude of at least 4.7 has shaken southern England.
The quake struck at 8.18am, 15 miles south of Canterbury and 4.4 miles deep.

Folkestone was badly affectedThe European monitoring station said the magnitude of the quake was 5.0.

Kent Fire Brigade initially said that the tremor had been caused by an explosion in Folkestone.

Fire officials said they were being inundated with "lots and lots" of calls from residents across the region.

A Kent Fire and Rescue Service spokesman said: "We have had calls from people saying their chimneys have fallen down, large cracks in people's houses."

Power and phone supplies have been lost in a number of towns.

It is understood householders felt the tremor further afield including in East Sussex, Essex and Suffolk.

Eyewitness Scott Janaway told Sky News: "The whole ground just shook. It was moving."

Eurostar said that the tremor had not affected services across the Channel.

Kent police have advised people to stay indoors unless they have structural damage to their homes.

People are urged to contact authorities if they can smell gas.

Fairly freaky. Thankfully it wasn't too big though. Is it time to hide in the hallway?

Kintarō Hattori

5 is fairly high. I wonder with all the climate change are there other things happening with the earth that we're not aware of and will we see stronger earthquakes in places that they usually wouldn't have been in the past?

sternn

Global warming cant affect the movements of the plates. Its probably an ancient faultline under Kent. Earthquakes usually happen at plate boundaries and we are in the centre of one, thats why earthquakes are so rare for us.

Didnt one happen in the irish sea about 20/30 years ago or something like that? Apparently water pipes and stuff like that were damaged.

Kintarō Hattori

sternn wrote:

Global warming cant affect the movements of the plates.

Hmnn I'm aware of that, but who knows what else is going on? I thought it was a fairly stupid question to ask alright, but there must be unforseens changes taking place that we're not aware of.

Hmnn I guess I've watched too many disaster movies!

I just saw this on Sky News. Some woman emailed in saying she thought her house was being broken into with all the noise.

Bugger, imagine if one happens here.

Fajitas!

At least we have concrete houses, as opposed to the majority of the wooden ones in the US.

Very strange for it to happen so close. I know it was confirmed not to be the Nuclear power plant, but what happens if a quake hits again, closer to the plant? Are they built to be earthquake proof?

timmywex

according to rte news, it happened near the eurotunnel so maybe its because of that??

sternn

Deleted User wrote:

I just saw this on Sky News. Some woman emailed in saying she thought her house was being broken into with all the noise.

Hmm....must have thought it was one hell of a large burglar!!!!!

mike65

The amount of energy required to move a plate is vast, unimaginable really. The idea that a couple of degrees rise in temp (and yes its been warmer than usual!) can cause greater incidence of earthquakes is daft. The power that move plates comes from below, not above.

Mike

ps there is a theory that extraction of oil is causing more quakes as, according to this theory oil acts as a buffer/lubricant. As it disappears minor plate movements increase.

robinph

I thought there was one of about 3 or something somewhere in Ireland in the last year or so. There are generally small ones happening quite regularly its just we don't notice them and think it was a big lorry driving by or something.

Edit: I saw in the background of a BBC report just now a webpage showing all the recent quakes around Europe, couldn't find that page but here is one for the whole world.

timmywex

timmywex wrote:

according to rte news, it happened near the eurotunnel so maybe its because of that??

Good God.You could be right.Did you notice that it happened two days before the day after tomorrow?:eek:

johnnyrotten

SKY NEWS have it flogged to death as usual

Kintarō Hattori

mike65 wrote:

The amount of energy required to move a plate is vast, unimaginable really. The idea that a couple of degrees rise in temp (and yes its been warmer than usual!) can cause greater incidence of earthquakes is daft. The power that move plates comes from below, not above.

Mike

ps there is a theory that extraction of oil is causing more quakes as, according to this theory oil acts as a buffer/lubricant. As it disappears minor plate movements increase.

Hmnn I wasn't refering as such to climate change but more to our interfering with the planet and the damage that we're causing. So it's interesting alright to see that something like oil extraction could cause more quakes. Does much extraction happen near us?

KTRIC

I just felt a big tremour ............ in my pants


Oops, wrong thread.

mike65

eo980, the oil theory sounds a bit mad to me, plenty of oil is extracted in areas with little or no quake activity while thier are very active areas with no oil drilling.

Another (particuarly nutty) idea is that teh earth is expanding! OMG! And so creating countless stress fractures! :eek:

Mike.

Wertz

Anyone recall the one that happened on the welsh coast in the mid 80s?
I was staying in Wicklow with my cousins when we were all awoken one weekend morning by vibrating and shaking and a low rumble....that one was around 5 point something on the richter scale too.

As for what's causing them so far from fault lines? AFAIK tremors are liable to happen anywhere on a plate where enough momentum or movement/pressure has built up.
On the oil drilling thing....don't they plug wells with pressurised sea water to avoid subsidence and that? Besides, you'd need to take a vast vast amount of oil out of the ground to allow for the forces at work here to get triggered.

Rest assured that a piddling little hole in the ground like the chunnel is NOT going to cause anything like a tremor that a human could feel...

Marksie

robinph wrote:

I thought there was one of about 3 or something somewhere in Ireland in the last year or so.

Usually happens when i have a g/friend over, so they are very common in laois lol

Wertz

Irish earthquakes are like hen's teeth.

Here's a detailed earthquake map for the British Isles and Ireland.

http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/hazard/ukseismap.jpg

The UK get an awful lot more than what you'd think.

PeakOutput

Fajitas! wrote:

At least we have concrete houses, as opposed to the majority of the wooden ones in the US.

i dont know if concrete houses are a plus.....apparently flexibility is the way to go when it comes to earthquake defence and as far as i know concrete does not flex too well

Fajitas!

Fajitas! wrote:

Are they built to be earthquake proof?

They're all (in Europe) required to be earthquake proof in recent years, in Eurocode 8. I assume there's a British Standard which covered this before Eurocode anyways.

Nuclear Power plants have to be designed to high standards, given the nature of them...

Some pictures from a guy in folkstone kent.

Look at the damage inside his house - never mind what happened outside!

http://theweatheroutlook.com/twocommunity/forums/permalink/237308/237295/ShowThread.aspx#237295

Fajitas!

Myth wrote:

They're all (in Europe) required to be earthquake proof in recent years

Righto - Makes sense.

Lirange

There's no place on the earth immune to seismic events.

Binomate

Lirange wrote:

There's no place on the earth immune to seismic events.

I'm pretty sure you can't have an earthquake in the sky.

weeder

he did say On the earth, the sky would be off the earth:p

Manic Moran

A 5.0 is pretty hefty and you'll certainly notice it. I don't believe I've been in one that large since I moved to the San Francisco area in 2000, and we're famous for them. Looking at the records, I have to go back to Sept 2004 before I find a 5.0 or greater (5.96 in this case) in Northern California. (I was in Iraq, so missed it, darnit).

NTM

Victor

timmywex wrote:

according to rte news, it happened near the eurotunnel so maybe its because of that??

If that was the case, you would likely see damage in hte tunnel or at least a temporary tunnel closure.

eo980 wrote:

Hmnn I wasn't refering as such to climate change but more to our interfering with the planet and the damage that we're causing. So it's interesting alright to see that something like oil extraction could cause more quakes. Does much extraction happen near us?

Not really. There is some natural extraction and exploration off Cork, but the nearest commercial oil fields are off north-west England, lathough on a much smaller scale than the North Sea.

Capt'n Midnight

mike65 wrote:

The amount of energy required to move a plate is vast, unimaginable really.
...
ps there is a theory that extraction of oil is causing more quakes as, according to this theory oil acts as a buffer/lubricant. As it disappears minor plate movements increase.

One thing that does trigger earthquakes are large dams. it's the enormous weight of water. Also reducing the water table by pumping up from deep wells would also do similar.

Pumping water into hotspots for to get the steam may also lubricate those areas.

IIRC they were thinking of lubricating the san andreas fault so they get lots o minor qukes instead of a whopper but can't until after the next big quake takes the stress out.

RuggieBear

when i was at uni in Leicester (2001/2002) we had two earthquakes about 9 months apart. Barely noticed the first as i was playing a match and it just felt like a large truck going by. I was inside for the other...all the glasses, plates and cups rattled for about 40 seconds. and it set off a load of car alarms and house alarms.

http://www.seced.org.uk/newsletters/v16n3.pdf?PHPSESSID=5f234fd4abef769bc8805f11d33e4604

paul666

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

One thing that does trigger earthquakes are large dams. it's the enormous weight of water. Also reducing the water table by pumping up from deep wells would also do similar.

Pumping water into hotspots for to get the steam may also lubricate those areas.

IIRC they were thinking of lubricating the san andreas fault so they get lots o minor qukes instead of a whopper but can't until after the next big quake takes the stress out.

u were watching that documentary this mornin werent u?

sdanseo

johnnyrotten wrote:

SKY NEWS have it flogged to death as usual

Naturally...pain in the áss. Wish RTÉ had a 24 channel, at least the news would be of a higher standard.

Artmustang

Manic Moran wrote:

A 5.0 is pretty hefty and you'll certainly notice it. I don't believe I've been in one that large since I moved to the San Francisco area in 2000, and we're famous for them. Looking at the records, I have to go back to Sept 2004 before I find a 5.0 or greater (5.96 in this case) in Northern California. (I was in Iraq, so missed it, darnit).

NTM

and you wish you were there when it happened?:eek: Not me! No please, not anymore.I had enough of it.

Jimoslimos

I'm living in West Kent and didn't feel anything. The gf woke at about quarter past 8, pretty much exactly the same time as the quake - doesn't know why but probably attributed it to a large lorry (we live on a busy road) at the time. From all accounts they seem quite common here (along with tornados and heatwaves!:eek: )

4.3 is big enough but nowhere near a 5, AFAIK the Richter scale is logarithmic so a 5 would be 10 times larger than a 4. Anyway I thought that this scale was obsolete and there was a more accurate way of measuring earthquake magnitude? Any seismologists confirm?