Buildings shook across Victoria on Wednesday morning as Victoria recorded an earthquake, with residents from metropolitan Melbourne to Geelong to Gippsland reporting violent shaking.

The earthquake had a magnitude of 5.5 to 5.8, with the epicentre 100 kilometres from Melbourne, around Licola, to the city’s east.

“It’s between a 5.5 and a 5.8,” said Mark Quigley, a geoscientist from the University of Melbourne.

“That’s called the moment magnitude - that gives you an idea of how much the ground moved. The strong shaking went on for about 10 seconds.

“For something of that size, we’re talking about a fault that would be on the order of maybe 5 kilometres long and three kilometres wide.”

“For an earthquake of that magnitude, we would expect to get hundreds of small aftershocks. We could get aftershocks in the range of 4.5 magnitude.

“There is no assurance you couldn’t get larger earthquakes.

Shaking was felt as far away as Canberra.

More earthquakes to come

“On a local level, if you’ve got unreinforced masonry, or you are doing the roofing for your house, it’s just about minimizing the sort of risks that might be avoidable in your day- to day life, especially over the next 24 to 48 hours. Because that’s typically when the highest probability of a significant aftershock is,” said Mr Quigley.

“High-rise buildings in the CBD were not at risk, he said. “In Melbourne, I don’t think any more so than in any other situation. It’s more about unreinforced masonry, vulnerable settings.”

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victoria-earthquake-buildings-shake-from-melbourne-to-canberra-20210922-p58tq7.html

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4926978&forum_id=2#43155334)