[ukmicky (OP)]

Who felt the earth tremor. it was at about 1 am and i felt it in london .  I thought i was just me going MAD but according to the news it was about 5.1 on the richter scale

[another_someone]

I have been hearing about it, and lots of people farther south and farther west than me felt it (and the epicentre was to the north east of me by quite a way), but I felt not a thing.

At first I though it was just me being inattentive, but looking around the house, nothing seems to have moved, so if it did pass through here, it could not have been that dramatic.

[paul.fr]

I was in Hull at the time, It made my chair move from side to side for a few seconds. But nothing more. Yet others in Hull (according to sky news) had it so bad that they thought a jet plane had crashed through their home!
I think they just wanted their name read out on the news.

[that mad man]

(transferred from chat)

Well that was a good one, started at 00:58 and lasted around 10-15 seconds.

Anyone else experience it?

A few seconds of rumble beforehand, windows shook and some things fell of the bathroom shelf into the bath. Some minor damage to properties and people mainly from falling chimneys.

Where I live in Sheffield is on the edge of a fault line and I rocked in bed! (so that's what bedrock is)  grin

[Make it Lady]

I'm sure people in parts of America and Japan would laugh at us Brits getting excited about a 5.1
I was in Japan for a large one and I remembered that you had to get under a table but the table in my house was a tatarmi one (You sit crosslegged around it so the legs are v.short.) I still managed to get under it, thought I was going to die. I leant some good Japanese swear words as the scaffolders on the building next door werent best pleased.

[JimBob]

No, m'dear, a 5 mag. earthquake is not a tame one. It can cause lives so it is quite luck no one died.

This was apparently caused by compressional forces due to the continued separation of the UK from mainland Europe. To the north, there are older rocks that have deeper "roots" and are less able to be deformed than the younger rocks to the east and south.

The tectonic stresses are indicated by the lines on the map below from

http://www-wsm.physik.uni-karlsruhe.de/index.html



The black arrows that point at each other are measured compressional forces and the green with a square are upward forces. The blue is forces whose main component is down warping and the red is from a well bore. The compass direction of the lines is the direction of the forces.

If you compare this with a geologic map of the UK the types of rocks are evident.



The olive and greens are Triassic and younger rocks, the pink, blue and gray are the Permian and older rocks that were originally part of the continent. The younger rocks were deposited after the island started separating from the main part of Europe.

It is (dun, dun, dun, daaaaahhhhh!)

GEOLOGY IN ACTION !

[Make it Lady]

I guess no one was killed because we have had our last two 5+ earthquakes in the early hours of the morning when people are in bed. I read in Japan that most people die in earthquakes because they panic, run outside and get hit by falling objects. That is why I hid, bravely, under the table. Info. very useful, I shall use it in the future.

Oh yes and our houses are made of bricks so they are harder to shake down. People should learn from the three little pigs. 

[another_someone]

Oh yes and our houses are made of bricks so they are harder to shake down. People should learn from the three little pigs. 

Actually it is more complex than that, and badly built brick houses are more dangerous (not least because when they do fall down, they hurt more; but also because they wont bend with the shocks).

I don't think it that common for serious injuries at anything below 6, but Japan can easily go to 7 and above (and don't forget we are talking about a logarithmic scale).

[Bored chemist]

I woke up because of the noise. I wondered what the loud low rumble was. Then the house started shaking so I thought "oh, so it's an earthquake". I went back to sleep. You are a lot more likely to be killed by a thunderbolt in the UK than by an earthquake.
For the record, it's less annoying than being woken up by a bomb.


BTW JimBob, Re. "It can cause lives so it is quite luck no one died."
Actually, it's a different sort of "the earth moved" event that's associated with causing lives.
Thanks for the maps.


The comment about the 3 little pigs is proably more apropriate when thinking about tornado damage.

[JimBob]

BTW JimBob, Re. "It can cause lives so it is quite luck no one died."
Actually, it's a different sort of "the earth moved" event that's associated with causing lives.

How so? A young man had his hips crushed when a chimney fell on him. It would have taken one brick to the head to have killed him.

The comment about the 3 little pigs is proably more apropriate when thinking about tornado damage.

I'll explain the problems with masonry construction in earthquakes when I get back from a doctor's appointment.

[Bored chemist]

Jimbob,
Read what you actually wrote.
"It can cause lives"
As I said, it's something else that does that.

Masonry does fall down in earthquakes, but it does a better job than timber when it comes to stopping flying debris so it's good to hide behind in a tornado. Of course, if it falls on you you are in big trouble but while it stands it's good stuff.

I seem to remember hearing somewhere that "earthquakes don't kill people- buildings do".

[JimBob]

Jimbob,
Read what you actually wrote.
"It can cause lives"
As I said, it's something else that does that.

Masonry does fall down in earthquakes, but it does a better job than timber when it comes to stopping flying debris so it's good to hide behind in a tornado. Of course, if it falls on you you are in big trouble but while it stands it's good stuff.

I seem to remember hearing somewhere that "earthquakes don't kill people- buildings do".

You are correct - it is buildings that kill, not the quake itself. Somehow the long post on masonry construction was deleted - there is a problem with the forum software. I am unable to redo it at the moment. Just suffice it to say that the magnitude of the earthquake is what knocks down buildings. Masonry will not stand up in a magnitude 6 quake and is in grave danger at a 5.5 magnitude. That is unless it is retrofitted or built with reinforcements to new standard earthquake codes. So the 5.0 magnitude (depending on which earthquake center's figure you use) is borderline.

The mag. 5 quake is equivalent in the amount of energy released to the nuclear bomb that destroyed Nagasaki at the end of WW II - 32 kilotons or 134.4 Trillion Joules. The depth to the epicenter dampened the effects somewhat but it is still very luck it wasn't near a large urban area.

[Karen W.]

Side to side seem to cause most damage.. was this an up and down quake or did it move side to side!

I think it was around '92 or so we had a 7.2 followed by 7.1 or 7.0 with a couple five aftershocks.. It was a rolling motion and the hole street outside of my house was rolling like a wave coming from the south and rolling kind of northerly.. the cement was waving with two and three foot rolls past my front door.. It was scary telephone poles were laying way down then returning to upright position on the roll back!!!

The fives can be terrible also depending on how the hit and where they hit and the type of motion.. I have been in fives that seem mild and then 5's that were scary because of the type..

[JimBob]

Both types of quakes produce the same amount of side-to-side and vertical waves surface waves. They are know as S-waves and P-waves. There is no rational explanation for the subjective experience. It just is.

[Bored chemist]

"There is no rational explanation for the subjective experience. "
Surely distance from the epicentre would explain why some seem bigger than others?

[BAZ0000]

My fiance and I live approximately 45 miles from the epicentre, in Nottingham, UK and we experienced a lot of movement. Our old precast concrete garage attached the house made the most tremendous amount of rattling during the tremor. Only of course to reinforce my plans to demolish it and build a new blockwork one! ha ha! I was quite amazed at how much movement we experienced. However, you folks in the states are obviously accustom to such events and I can only assume that you're are having a little chuckle at our mere tremor! ha ha ha! My first experience I may add though.

[JimBob]

"There is no rational explanation for the subjective experience. "
Surely distance from the epicenter would explain why some seem bigger than others?

I was observing that different observers at the same place alway say somewhat different things about their experience. Such a phenom. is also seen at crime scenes where different witnesses have different recollections.

You are correct about the distance from the epicenter.

[Karen W.]

Both types of quakes produce the same amount of side-to-side and vertical waves surface waves. They are know as S-waves and P-waves. There is no rational explanation for the subjective experience. It just is.

Do you think it is just where you are that makes it worse as I said it seems here at least that side to side do the most damage.. I have three huge splits in my houses foundation where it split the cement foundation under the back of the house?

[Karen W.]

"There is no rational explanation for the subjective experience. "
Surely distance from the epicentre would explain why some seem bigger than others?

That makes some since.. we live on the San Andreas fault line ..Humboldt County kinda right on top of it!

[Karen W.]

My fiance and I live approximately 45 miles from the epicentre, in Nottingham, UK and we experienced a lot of movement. Our old precast concrete garage attached the house made the most tremendous amount of rattling during the tremor. Only of course to reinforce my plans to demolish it and build a new blockwork one! ha ha! I was quite amazed at how much movement we experienced. However, you folks in the states are obviously accustom to such events and I can only assume that you're are having a little chuckle at our mere tremor! ha ha ha! My first experience I may add though.

You Know you may get used to having them but you never have a chuckle.. they are scary... no fun.. and they scare the soup out of little children and big children and their Mamas and Papas too!!!


 No I feel for you all.. they are frightening!