Muswellbrook earthquake information by Geoscience Australia - Newcastle Herald - August 23, 2024
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00:00Dr. Hadi Ghassemi, Senior Seismologist at Geoscience Australia.
00:13And why are we here today?
00:16The Magnitude 5 earthquake in Musselbrook region that happened around noon today.
00:23Actually we received a significant number of more than 1,600 field reports so far and
00:28it is increasing as we speak and I have seen even field reports from Wollongong region
00:34which is a couple of hundred kilometers south of the epicenter area.
00:39So far after the main shock itself we have registered more than two aftershocks.
00:45The first one was a magnitude 3.3 I believe and the second one that was followed was a
00:50magnitude 2.9.
00:52And there is always a possibility that aftershocks would continue for the weeks to come, but
00:58as a general rule of thumb the larger aftershocks tend to occur at the early stages of the earthquake
01:06main shock aftershock sequence and the frequency starts to decay as the time goes by.
01:13It happened 10 kilometers from the Mount Arthur Coal Mine site, is this activity linked to the mine?
01:18It is not unusual for the earthquakes to occur close to the mines because the mines are actually
01:23located close to the fault lines and the fault lines provide the passage for the fluids
01:28to go through them and deposit valuable minerals, but the same process can actually increase
01:34the likelihood of earthquake occurrence.
01:39So if someone feels an earthquake shaking the best advice would be to drop the cover
01:45and hold on to it, so you should drop to your knees and then try to take cover under sturdy
01:50objects like tables and hold on to it until the shake completely passes.
01:56I actually looked at the historical seismicity of the region, I just looked at the past 20 years
02:03in the 100 kilometer radius of the recent event, there are more than 150 events over the past 20 years.
02:10This one was of course the largest one, but we had also a magnitude I think 4.4 in 2019.
02:16Denman has reported four quakes in the last four years, does that make it a hot spot?
02:23Not necessarily, because as I just mentioned this region is not alien to the earthquakes,
02:29so we have earthquakes in this region, but most of the time those earthquakes are in
02:34a moderate to small sized events.
02:39So if the people feel an earthquake they can go to earthquakes at the GA website and there
02:45is a button there so they can go and register their health reports.
02:53Where is Newcastle, so Ali you know better than me.
02:55So Newcastle...
02:57You need the red circle, if you didn't know, and the triangles, what are they?
03:02Those are the states, yes.
03:04Why wouldn't there be a tsunami?
03:06Tsunami?
03:07Yeah, it's quite likely.
03:08I said oh no, that's happening again and then I just rang, yeah.
03:13Reports by any chance, have you noticed any?
03:162,324.
03:17Wow.
03:182,336.
03:22And I think given the proximity to mines, they're probably temporarily closed.
03:27I'm sure they'll be inspected to make sure they're safe, you think?
03:30Do they have regulations?
03:31I'm sure they would.
03:32Interesting.
03:33Well, we can have a look at it.
03:35Oh, no, they're not going to.
03:36No, you can't.
03:37Oh, you can actually.
03:38Yeah.
03:42Oh, so...
03:51Yeah.
03:52Yeah.
03:53Yeah.
03:54Yeah.
03:55Yeah.
03:56Yeah.