Geoscience Australia has said residents living in areas between Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour will continue to experience earthquakes and should take the opportunity to educate themselves on earthquake safety.
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At 3.30pm January 23 there were 10 earthquakes recorded since January 19 ranging between 2.0 and 3.1 in magnitude. Towns right along the Mid North Coast are being affected by the tremors including Nambucca Heads, South West Rocks, Stuarts Point, Dorrigo, Armidale, Hat Head, Eungai and Macksville.
Senior seismologist at Geoscience Australia Hugh Glanville said it is unlikely the quakes will stop any time soon.
We don’t know if that will happen, but there’s always a chance so we always like to encourage people to get educated.
“Given the current activity residents are likely to feel more earthquakes occurring as there’s no reason for us to suspect that activity will stop. While it’s rare and none of these earthquakes have been big, there is always a chance that a bigger earthquake can occur.”
“We don’t know if that will happen, but there’s always a chance so we always like to encourage people to get educated,” he said.
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Mr Glanville said the cause of the earthquakes is unknown.
“There hasn’t been a trigger for these particular events. Australia generally gets a decent amount of earthquakes per year. For example, in 2016 there were 123 earthquakes recorded by us in NSW so it’s quite regularly that we get earthquakes in Australia and NSW as a whole.
“Those are generally small to medium in size but sometimes there are bigger ones. We haven’t had many in this local area in a while and it is quite sporadic and random in nature.
“Australian plates move northwards and when the plates build up a bit of stress along the continent this stress is released in the form of earthquakes. We do get a concentration of earthquakes along eastern Australia as that region is both newer geologically and has had more recent active faulting.
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“So we have quite a lot of earthquakes up near the eastern seaboard, near Melbourne, all the way up through the snowy mountains and north of the ACT and then up through Muswellbrook, past Tamworth and then it just keeps going. Recently, just over the last year, there’s been some earthquakes up near Queensland.”
Mr Glanville advised locals to continue reporting tremors via via www.ga.gov.au as Geoscience Australia continues to monitor the situation.
For information on what to do in the event of a major earthquake locals can see: