“We’ve had earthquakes in that region before, but not for very long… this is the largest earthquake in the Melbourne metropolitan region in over 120 years, in fact it’s quite significant. It is not unknown.
“So (in) that region, there are kind of known faults, and we’ve seen earthquakes in the past, but nothing that big.”
On Sunday evening, the State Emergency Service said it would send a team to inspect a building reportedly cracked in suburban Ascot Vale.
The SES also received reports of a cracked road near Mickleham.
Sunbury resident Corey Lainez, 41, lives near the epicenter and told this newspaper the quake left a crack in his kitchen wall.
“I thought a car or truck had hit the house, and before I could get to my feet, the dogs were running around the house barking,” she said. “It was a very big and violent jolt.”
More than 20,000 Victorians, and some Tasmanians, submitted a “felt report” to Geoscience Australia after Sunday night’s earthquake.Credit: geoscience australia
Other Victorians described shaking sensations and hearing loud thumps during the earthquake.
Melbourne musician Erin Shay was performing on a live video when the tremor struck, jumping up in shock mid-song and looking around in confusion, before asking her guitarist bandmate and husband Simon Hopman: “Did you feel that?”
Shay felt a strong tremor, but Hopman, who was standing with her at her home in Taylors Lakes, northwest of Melbourne, did not feel it.
“In the middle of the song, I felt the tremor shake the stool I was sitting on,” she said. “He (Hopman) must have moved in sync with the music.”
Shay said they were streaming live late into the night so viewers in the US, UK and Europe could tune in.
But it was a fan in Melbourne who lived in an apartment who confirmed that he had also felt the tremor and that it was an earthquake.
“We stopped and had a talk about it for a while. Later we will continue”.
Shay was standing in her kitchen when the 2021 earthquake struck and said this one felt similar. “I felt a thud in my chest.”
The earthquake follows a 2.5 magnitude seismic event near Ferntree Gully, 30 kilometers southeast of Melbourne’s CBD, on May 16. The federal geosciences body said Melbournes felt the tremor as far west of the epicenter as Camberwell, and as far south as Narre Warren.
The large 5.9 magnitude temblor that struck Victoria on September 22, 2021, when the city was in the midst of a COVID-19 lockdown, was “more severe, but more remote,” Pascale said.
Six aftershocks occurred throughout the day after the initial quake, measuring magnitudes 3.5, 4.1, 2.5, 3.1, 2.4 and 2.9.
No injuries were reported after the 2021 earthquake, but Betty’s Burgers & Concrete Co restaurant in Chapel Street, Windsor, was significantly damaged after parts of its facade collapsed and collapsed onto the pavement.
Pascale acknowledged that Melbourne had been hit by a “surge” of earthquakes and said the seismic activity was not unexpected.
“So we’ve had a series of events that were felt in a relatively short period of time,” he said.
“But if we’re looking at … geologic time scales, you would expect these kinds of things from what we’ve seen in the region. But for them to be so coincident in time is unusual.”
Geoscience Australia seismologist Hugh Glanville told ABC radio that there have been 29 earthquakes in the last 10 years within a 100km radius of the quake on Sunday night.
He said that earthquakes tended to cause damage to the walls when they reached a magnitude of 4.5 or 5.
Glanville said that in Australia earthquakes used to be about 10 kilometers deep.
“When it is three kilometers deep, it is much shallower. So the source of the tremor is much closer to people, so they feel it more strongly,” he said. “It is relatively common in the region.”
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