Quake bill set to run to tens of millions
Feb 28 2008 by Dan Warburton, The Journal
TREMORS rippled through the North East yesterday as an earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale sent shock waves across the country.
Insurers throughout Britain are facing a massive payout stretching into the tens of millions after huge areas were shaken in the early hours of the morning.
The earthquake is the biggest in this country for almost 25 years. A British Geological Survey reported that the epicentre of the tremors was near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, and struck just after midnight.
Northumbria police received more than 20 calls in half an hour after the earthquake, with people as far as Haydon Bridge, Northumberland, feeling the wave. Fortunately, there were no injuries reported in the region.
A spokesman for the police said: “We took a number of calls in relation to it. In the force control room, a member of staff saw his terminal shake and then he started to receive reports of tremors.”
Academics from Durham University are offering likely explanations for the surprise quake, citing an old fault zone – which has been dormant for hundreds of millions of years – as a possible cause.
Professor Robert Holdsworth, expert in structural geology, said: “Most potentially damaging earthquakes like this occur near to plate boundaries such as the San Andreas Fault. The UK, however, lies in the interior of a plate so this is quite unusual. It is possible that this earthquake reflects the reactivation of an old fault zone that has lain dormant for tens or hundreds of millions of years.
“The UK crust is riddled with such old faults which form an important part of our geological heritage. Perhaps this one is just reminding us that it is still there.”
Roger Searle, professor of geophysics at Durham University, described the earth as a series of cracked paving stones laid on top of thick toffee.
“Although most earthquakes occur along tectonic plate boundaries such as the San Andreas Fault, Britain does experience a moderate level of seismic activity. This reflects minor adjustments to the stresses that occur in all plates.
“The earth’s surface is made up of rigid things called plates but underneath these there is something like thick toffee. Cracked paving stones sit on top of this toffee. In this country there used to be a tectonic boundary that ran right through the country, but the cracks have sealed up. it went through the Lake District and through Newcastle, but it’s joined up now.”
And according to Prof Searle, it is unlikely that we will see another earthquake of a similar magnitude for some time.
He said: “A quake as large as the one on Wednesday morning is quite rare in Britain – it is almost 25 years since the last one of this size, which was in Wales.
“The bigger the earthquake the longer it is before a large earthquake comes along. So there is a possibility that it will be some time before we experience something similar.”
Comment: Page 10
