On Sunday, May 28, Melbourne, Australia, was struck by a remarkable earthquake, the largest to strike the city in almost a century.
According to preliminary information, the 3.8-magnitude earthquake struck the northern suburb of Sunbury at 11:41 p.m. local time at a depth of 2 kilometers (1.24 miles).
According to Adam Pascale, chief scientist at the Seismology Research Centre in Victoria, the earthquake was the largest within 40 kilometers of Melbourne since a magnitude 4.5 quake in 1902.
“It jolted me awake!” Minor shaking for about 5-10 seconds. “The adrenaline hasn’t worn off yet…” Pascale stated this on Twitter.
More than 21,000 reports of the quake were received by Geoscience Australia, with shockwaves reported as far away as Bendigo, some 150 kilometers north of Melbourne, and as far south as Hobart on the island of Tasmania.
Melbourne eclipsed Sydney as Australia’s most populated city in April, and many of the city’s 5.8 million citizens awoke Monday with a story to tell.
“Felt like a plane crashed right next to my house or something,” one resident told CNN station 7News.
“I’m on the 70th floor of the Eureka Tower, and the entire building swayed a couple of metres,” another Melbourne resident tweeted, referring to a downtown skyscraper, according to CNN affiliate Sky News Australia.
According to one witness, they “ran out of the house with a machete” in their pyjamas.
“Our old house sounded like it was getting broken into,” they explained to Sky News Australia.
The Bureau of Meteorology in Australia confirmed on Twitter that there was no tsunami threat from the quake, while emergency services warned of probable aftershocks in a Facebook message.
