Why does melbourne get earthquakes

Please support us by making a donation or purchasing a subscription today. Share Tweet. Melbourne's popular Chapel St shopping precinct was among areas damaged. Credit: BBC. More on:. Three types of plate movement. Credit: Wikimedia commons. Tectonic plate boundries. Deborah Devis Deborah Devis is a science journalist at Cosmos. Melbourne's east has been rattled by its largest earthquake in 50 years.

The 3. It was the second earthquake to hit Victoria in as many days, reminding many residents that the state is populated by fault lines and susceptible to earthquakes. Earthquakes are a sudden phenomenon. Therefore, seismologists have no way of knowing exactly when or where the next one will hit.

Or sometimes, that initial earthquake can be a foreshock to another earthquake," Mr Maldoni said. He said it was unlikely Thursday's Pakenham earthquake was related to the quake which hit the Gippsland town of Korumburra on Wednesday morning. You're not likely to get much [activity] more after today's event," he said. It would take a "very, very large earthquake" - a magnitude of 6. The level of damage depends on what is in the vicinity of the earthquake's epicentre. Fortunately, many of Victoria's earthquakes measure less than 3.

Minimum building standards for earthquakes first applied in Victoria in , but Matthew O'Hearn of Engineers Australia has told Fairfax Media it was unlikely a large number of buildings in Melbourne would "topple over" in an earthquake.

Last year alone, 13 earthquakes with a magnitude of 2. However, it is likely there were many more which would have been too weak to be detected. Over the past years, about earthquakes have been detected across the state, the majority of which were recorded in the Gippsland area.

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Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morning. It helps us detect expected ground motions of earthquakes going forward. This is essential information for engineers building city structures in future, as we can, for example, say how much ground motion can be expected at a given location over the next 50 years.