A 6.0 magnitude earthquake in the Indonesian Banda Sea sent an aftershock throughout Darwin earlier this morning with many locals woken up by shaking beds and windows.
Roughly 320km north of Darwin an earthquake struck at a depth of 126 kilometres however the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has said that there is no threat of a tsunami. Although no damage was caused, residents were woken up by the tremors at about 4am this morning with twitter user @Gill Sarjeet saying “Earthquake felt in Darwin. Shook our Unit, things fell off the shelves. Wife & daughter woke up. Wanted to run down for safety. I said, “just go to sleep, it is less than the previous quake.” Tremor subsided & we all went to sleep”.
Darwin isn’t the only place in Australia to have experienced an earthquake recently with Western Australia’s Great Southern region hit by a 4.7 magnitude earthquake last week. Hitting the town of Wagin, tremors could be felt in nearby regions with Broomehill Farmers Terry and Kym Crosby saying that the earthquake “rattled the windows” and “woke [them] up” some 75 km away.
Although the recent earthquakes in both Western Australia and Darwin could appear to be related, Chief Scientist of the Seismology Research Centre Adam Pascale told NewsCop that they weren’t associated.
“The earthquakes in WA and the magnitude 6 Indonesian earthquake felt in Darwin are not related [as] neither released enough energy to trigger faults that distant from the source,” he said.
Furthermore, Mr Pascale commented that the recent eruption of the Tongan Volcano was not connected.
“The volcanic eruption in Tonga did not release enough energy through the earth to trigger any faults in Australia,” he said.
“The time period between these events also rules out a correlation,”
Mr Pascale went on to say that “Australia has a magnitude 6.0 earthquake about every 10 years” and that on average “Australia will see a dozen earthquakes between magnitude 4.0 and 5.0 per year” like that of the 4.3 magnitude earthquake in WA last week.
