A small earth tremor briefly shook Burnham-On-Sea and the surrounding area last month, it was confirmed this week.
News of the small quake came when Burnham-On-Sea.com contacted the British Geological Survey – a group that monitors UK earthquakes – after we received an e-mail from a resident who thought she’d felt a tremor.
The BGS confirmed that a small quake measuring 1.9 on the Richter Scale occurred in North Petherton at 4.40pm on August 14th, some six kilometres below the earth’s surface.
David Galloway, a seismologist at the British Geological Survey group, told Burnham-On-Sea.com: “The tremor lasted just a second or two and was centred near Bridgwater, but it’s possible it was felt in Burnham.”
“We initially measured it at 2.2 on the Richter scale, but later revised it down to 1.9.”
“It was a shallow earthquake at just six kilometres – we frequently see tremors in the UK occurring at up to 25 kilometres beneath the surface. It was reasonably sized in UK terms, but very small in terms of worldwide earthquakes,” he added.
Mr Galloway said small tremors like this are not unusual in the UK. “There are actually about 200 in this country every year. Most go completely unnoticed by the public because they’re so small,” he said.
It’s not the first time that a tremor has rumbled across our area. A series of four earth tremors measuring up to 3.1 on the Richter scale occurred on 29th January 2004, centred on North Petherton. They caused the ground to briefly shake in Taunton and Bridgwater at approximately 10:56am and 8.23pm.
While the majority of seismic events in the south west are below 2.0 on the Richter scale, the largest was a 3.8 which hit Penzance in 1996. It was felt throughout Devon and Cornwall.
