By Tanya Steele
A minor magnitude two earthquake that was felt up into the Dandenong Ranges just before 7pm occurred on Tuesday 22 May, making it the second shock felt in the area within a week.
Senior Seismologist Hugh Glanville at Geoscience Australia said it was quite a small quake and not uncommon.
“Currently, we have a magnitude 2.0, that may get revised up or down slightly,” he said.
Mr Glanville said the shake was very similar to the one that Melbourne’s outer East experienced on 16 May.
It originated from the Boronia and Ferntree Gully area and it had quite a shallow depth of around two kilometres.
“That’s quite normal for the area and it’s a very small earthquake, it was only felt locally, not throughout Melbourne, so it was a very small, very minor earthquake,” he said.
Mr Glanville said they are generally random but that occasionally there may be foreshocks but that these events are not that common.
“You do get, correlations in place and times that you will have little sequences of earthquakes,” he said.
Geoscience keeps watch on areas that are more seismically active, to be alert for patterns of activity ahead of larger events.
“There are lots of earthquakes in the Wheatbelt in WA, so around areas like that they have earthquake swarms, where they have hundreds of small magnitude earthquakes in months or years in the same location,” said Mr Glanville.
“You want to continue to analyse these to see if these are precursors to my activity or major events,” he said.
The public can access the Geoscience website to see areas where “felt’ reports have been lodged in their areas.
“When they’re under populated area, people feel if it, but even out of town a bit you might not get any felt reports,” Mr Glanville said.
“So the more information we get in, the more we can verify the models of how far shaking is expected to travel and how strongly it’ll travel,” he said.
