Rare earthquake hits Australia, triggering panic in Melbourne

A rare earthquake rattled southeastern Australia early on Wednesday, shaking buildings, knocking down walls and sending panicked residents running into the streets of the country’s second-largest city. The shallow quake hit east of Melbourne just after 9am local time and was felt hundreds of kilometres away. The US Geological Survey put the magnitude of the quake at 5.8, later revised up to 5.9, and said it struck at a depth of 10 kilometres (six miles). Debris littered roads in the popular shopping area around Melbourne’s Chapel Street, with bricks apparently coming loose from buildings. Zume Phim, 33, owner of Melbourne’s Oppen cafe, said he rushed onto the street when the quake hit. ‘Not a defence alliance’: Australia looks to assuage Asean’s concerns over Aukus “The whole building was shaking. All the windows, the glass, was shaking – like a wave of shaking,” he told said. “I have never experienced that before. It was a little bit scary.” Sizeable earthquakes are unusual in Australia’s populated southeast, with local media reporting it was among the largest ever recorded in the country. “It was quite violent but everyone was kind of in shock,” said Melbourne cafe worker Parker Mayo, 30. Bricks and rubble lay on the ground outside Betty’s Burgers in Melbourne, with large sheets of metal hanging off the restaurant awning. The restaurant said in a Facebook post that everyone was safe: “We were fortunate that nobody was in the restaurant at the time.” Ok that was scary in the supermarket at the time isles started shaking and things crashing to the floor then came outside to see rubble on the ground that had fallen from very top of the building. #prahran #chapelstreet #melbourneearthquake #melbourne #earthquake pic.twitter.com/u0HaqafKkE — Craig Lawson (@mrFashion_man) September 22, 2021 At around magnitude 6 this was “the biggest event in southeast Australia for a long time” said Mike Sandiford, a geologist at the University of Melbourne. “We had some very big ones at magnitude six in the late 1800s, though precise magnitudes are not well known.” A quake of this size is expected every “10-20 years in southeast Australia, the last was Thorpdale in 2012” he said. “This is significantly bigger.” Sandiford said Australians should expect “many hundreds of aftershocks, most below human sensitivity threshold, but probably a dozen or more that will be felt at least nearby.” The quake “would have caused many billions of dollars in damage had it been under Melbourne,” he added. Opinion | Australia’s war posturing against China is out of tune – and dangerous Geosciences Australia said an aftershock measuring 4.0 struck soon after the initial temblor. The mayor of Mansfield, near the quake epicentre, said there was no damage in the small town but it had taken residents by surprise. “I was sitting down at work at my desk and I needed to run outside. It took me a while to work out what it was,” Mark Holcombe told public broadcaster ABC. “We don’t have earthquakes that I am aware of – none of the locals I spoke to this morning had that experience with earthquakes here before – so it is one right out of left field.” Emergency services said they had received calls for help as far away as Dubbo, about 700 kilometres from the quake epicentre, with fire and rescue crews dispatched to help. Prime Minister Scott Morrison, speaking from New York, said there were no initial reports of injuries. “It can be a very, very disturbing event for an earthquake of this nature,” he said. “They are very rare events in Australia.” Recovery efforts may be complicated by the ongoing pandemic lockdown and ongoing protests. Hundreds of demonstrators wearing work boots and hi-visibility jackets again rampaged through central Melbourne ON Wednesday in protest against vaccine requirements for construction workers. Police on Tuesday fired pepper spray, foam baton rounds and rubber ball grenades to disperse the crowd and warned further protests would “not be tolerated”.