Townsville experiences 4.4 magnitude earthquake

Geoscience Australia says the “relatively shallow”, 4.4 magnitude earthquake that struck Townsville on Saturday night was felt as far as 300 kilometres from its epicentre. WATCH THE VIDEO

Geoscience Australia says the “relatively shallow”, 4.4 magnitude earthquake that struck Townsville on Saturday night was felt as far as 300 kilometres from its epicentre.

According to the Geoscience Australia, the quake, initially placed in the Mount Stuart Defence Reserve, is now centred next to the Ross River Dam.

It was felt and reported by almost 5000 people.

Senior Seismologist Dr Phil Cummins said it had received reports from people 300 kilometres north and 300 kilometres south of the Townsville epicentre of people who had felt the quake.

Dr Cummins said the main safety advice for any repeat event was to “duck, cover and hold”.

“Get down, try to get below a solid table or desk and hold on so you don’t get shaken out from under cover.”

Power was restored to Townsville overnight.

Tom Porter, boarding activities coordinator at The Cathedral School in Townsville described the quake as “pretty amazing”.

“I was just sitting down doing some paperwork at home and all of a sudden the whole place rattled and I didn’t know what was going on,” he said.

“We ran outside just to check, there was nothing blown up so we put two and two together and thought it must have been an earthquake and then it went crazy on social media.

He said that he had “never felt anything like that before”.

“I think there was one maybe eight years ago, it was only a slight little shake, nothing like this, this was pretty substantial I reckon, not that I’ve been in an earthquake before and I don’t think I want to be in one that’s a serious one, I’ll stick to the 4.4.”

According to the Geoscience Australia, the quake, initially placed in the Mount Stuart Defence Reserve, is now centred next to the Ross River Dam.

Townsville City Council worker Grace Baldwin from Deeragun said she heard what sounded like a “bomb” about 9.30pm.

“All the windows in the house shook … all the birds flew out of the tree, it was pretty terrifying,” she said.

“I thought a truck had struck somebody’s house, I had no idea … I was convinced that something had exploded, you don’t just get an earthquake that makes a boom like that.”

Fellow TTC employee Linda Forscutt who lives in Railway Estate initially believed it was “the biggest clap of thunder or someone had hit a power pole”.

“There was a massive flash of light and then there was a massive boom, which made me think of a car crashing and power poles going down and then, there was a shake,” she said.

“I’ve never experienced an earthquake that had a flash of light, a massive boom and band, and then shaking so I am a bit sceptical about whether it was an earthquake.”

A Department of Defence spokesperson said on Sunday that the Townsville-based 3rd Brigade had confirmed there were no training activities or live-fire exercises underway when the earthquake hit.

Dr Cummins said the earthquake did not occur on a known fault line.

“I presume that it is just due to the slow build-up of tectonic stress in the interior of the Australian plate.”

He said the sound that many Townsville residents likened to a bomb explosion or high-speed car crash “was due to the fact that they were quite close to the earthquake (epicentre) and all the waves arrived at once, basically,” he said.

“Whereas if you are a farther distance, the wave types are sort of spread out and also the high-frequency energy attenuates so if you are at more of a distance it has more of a rumble or rolling type of character whereas if you are really close it can be really quite impulsive and perhaps would be similar to a large explosion.”

Dr Cummins acknowledged that the epicentre was on or near a Australian Defence Force reserve but had “no reason to believe that it was anything other than an earthquake”.

“And it’s quite large, it would have to be … a very large chemical explosion.”

EARLIER

Townsville has experienced a 4.4 magnitude earthquake, with North Queenslanders shocked to feel their homes shaking about 9.30pm Saturday.

Maps suggest it was about 17km from Townsville at a depth of 10km.

According to Ergon Energy’s outage finder, more than 4000 people lost power following the earthquake. Impacted suburbs include Hyde Park, Pimlico, Mysterton, Rosslea, Hermit Park, parts of West End and Mundingburra.

Witnesses described feeling houses shaking about 9.30pm as the tremor hit the city.

One described feeling as though a car had crashed into their home.

According to Geoscience Australia, small shocks were reportedly felt as far away as Cairns and west to Charters Towers.

It is understood there is no threat of a tsunami.

Power outages in Townsville due to the earthquake

It was not the only earthquake to strike Saturday evening, with a 3.3 magnitude hitting Musswellbrook in New South Wales.

According to a Queensland Government website, University of Queensland research indicates that Queensland’s highest earthquake hazard areas are along the populated eastern coast.

The two largest earthquakes in Queensland were in Gladstone in 1918 with a magnitude of 6.3, and Gayndah in 1935 measuring a magnitude of 6.1.

Punters took to social media to share their experience, with one person saying it was like a car was crashing into their house.

Multiple people said their pets were acting strangely before the event.

Another said: “oh crap, go look at the Ollera Creek Bridge”. The bridge on the Bruce Highway was badly damaged in recent flooding.

“Mundingburra ..... loud rumbling, strong vibrations, then a loud bang. Thought someone had bombed the barracks,” another said.

Someone said on Facebook that it “felt like the whole 5 story building was picked up and dropped in the city! It was crazy that’s for sure.”

A 4.4 magnitude earthquake hit Townsville on Saturday night.

In May last year, a section of cattle station country between Charters Towers and Herveys Range recorded a 2.5 magnitude earthquake.

At the time, Geoscience Australia senior seismologist Jonathan Bathgate said it was unusual but earthquakes had been recorded in the area before.

“There is not a great deal of seismic activity historically in that area, but there are some earthquakes on record,” he said.

That included a 4.1 quake in 1971 south of Charters Towers and a 5.7 earthquake between Charters Towers and Bowen in 1931.

In August 2016, some of North Queensland’s most popular tourist destinations were shaken by a large magnitude 5.8 earthquake which occurred about 70km off Bowen.

It was followed by a series of smaller aftershocks and felt widely across Far North Queensland and as far south as the Sunshine Coast.

Originally published as Townsville experiences 4.4 magnitude earthquake