Earthquake in Banda Sea felt across the Top End

Darwin was rocked overnight by its second earthquake in three months. Did you feel the quake?

DARWIN was rockin’ and rollin’ on Tuesday night after a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck in the Banda Sea.

Geoscience Australia reported the earthquake occurred at 10.59pm AEST at a depth of 156km.

Geoscience Australia senior duty seismologist Hugh Glanville said it received more than 257 calls in the hours following the quake with some reports claiming the tremors were felt as far south as Daly Waters.

There are yet to be reports of damage in East Timor but there was significant ground shaking.

The Bureau of Meteorology confirmed the quake and said there was no tsunami threat to the Australian coastline.

No #tsunami threat to Australia from #earthquake felt in Darwin, NT (magnitude 5.8 near Banda Sea). See https://t.co/Tynv3ZQpEq. pic.twitter.com/PL8rbW8Oy7

— Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) August 9, 2022

An earthquake was detected off the NT coast on Tuesday night, 1000km from Darwin

Geoscience Australia placed the epicentre of the quake about 1000km from Darwin, in the sea northwest of the Maluku Islands between Sulawesi and New Guinea.

Territorians took to social media to report feeling tremors or rooms shaking.

Just felt a little earthquake in Darwin!#earthquake#darwin

— Nova Peris OAM OLY (@NovaPeris) August 9, 2022

I swear I just felt an #earthquake in #Darwin! 😯

— Erin Archer (@Erin_Archer2) August 9, 2022

DARWIN ARE YOU FEELING THESE TREMORS?!?!? #earthquake

— (A)manda Parkinson (@idunnonews) August 9, 2022

Tuesday’s quake is the third to hit the Top End in the past 12 months due to a “build-up of stress” between the Australian and Asian Pacific tectonic plates – which Mr Glanville called the Ring of Fire.

“Australia is the fastest moving continental plate and the Pacific is the fastest moving oceanic plate,” he said.

“So the collision zone between the two has the most build-up of stress and a very large number of earthquakes.”

Mr Glanville said while frequent earthquakes could be a “precursor to larger earthquakes” the Banda Sea region was too random to predict.

“There isn’t a well known pattern for shocks and big ones in that area,” he said.

“There tends to be constant activity with occasional bigger ones.

“It’s generally just random build-up of stress and then release on various parts of the fault line.”

Three months ago Darwin was hit by a magnitude 6.2 earthquake which caused buildings across the city to shake.

Geosciences Australia said the quake hit at 12.06pm with some tremors lasting about 30 seconds.

The quake was at a depth of 65km and struck about 29km east-south-east of Lospalos in East Timor.

There were accounts of rattling apartment buildings in the city and shaking across Darwin’s northern suburbs.

“Wow I just felt the earth move here in Darwin! An earthquake just shook our Office building here in Casuarina,” one resident posted on Facebook.

A Darwin City resident said she felt it from her ninth floor apartment, reporting some “slight shaking” in the unit.