Residents remember the morning when the earth moved

Like riding on a bus or the rumble of a truck pulling into a loading dock. That’s how some Cape Town residents described the tremors that rocked the Western Cape early Sunday morning.

The seismic activity occurred about 400 kilometers from Cape Town, near a small town called Brandvlei in the Northern Cape.

Mahlatse Mononela, communications manager for the Council for GeoScience, told Diamond Fields Advertiser, a sister publication of this edition, that the earthquake occurred at around 2:51 a.m. and 5:28 a.m. on December 22.

“The South African Seismograph Network has recorded preliminary results showing that the earthquake recorded a magnitude 5.3 aftershock and a local magnitude of 2.9. “There have been reports of aftershocks that were also felt in other parts of the country, which are currently being analyzed,” she told the DFA.

Since 2020, there have been six earthquakes in Cape Town with a magnitude between 2 and 3.9.

Rushin Morton of Heideveld, who works at a factory in Salt River, had just finished his shift in the early morning hours when he felt the earth move.

“I actually thought a van was pulling up but when I went to the bay there was nothing there. But there was a pile of boxes scattered on the floor and I wondered how it ended up there,” Mr Morton explained.

He described a shaking feeling in the walls and floor, similar to the feeling when a large truck drives by.

Robyn Kessler, from Rondebosch, said she regularly wakes up in the early hours of the morning, but this time her experience was a little different.

“As far as I know, the epicenter was in the Northern Cape at 2:51am on Sunday morning. I regularly wake up around 3 a.m., so I was later able to make the connection between my bed shaking three times in 10 seconds and the aftershocks of the earthquake,” she said.

“It was five past three when I got up.”

Ashieq Collins had just returned to his observatory after a long day of work when he felt the tremor.

“I walked through the door and suddenly stuff started rattling, but I wasn’t convinced, so I stopped abruptly and put my ear to the floor,” he said.

“There wasn’t really any sound, just vibrations. If you were in dreamland, you would have had a hard time navigating and felt like you were riding a bus.”

According to CGS, the difference between an earthquake and an earthquake lies in the magnitude of the event. In the South African context, a seismic event with a magnitude of less than 4.0 is considered an earthquake.

Interesting fact about earthquakes in South Africa

The strongest recorded earthquake in South Africa struck Tulbagh on September 29, 1969, ultimately killing 12 people. The magnitude 6.3 quake was felt in the towns of Ceres, Tulbagh, Wolseley and Prince Alfred Hamlet. Significant damage also occurred in Porterville and Worcester as well as the villages of Gouda, Saron and Hermon.

There were a number of aftershocks: the largest of which occurred almost six months later and had a magnitude of 5.7. The Tulbagh quake was stronger than the one that destroyed a local Milnerton farm in 1809.

South Africa’s second largest recorded earthquake occurred on August 5, 2014 near Orkney in the northwest and had a magnitude of 5.5. It lasted about 90 seconds and was felt in parts of Botswana and Durban.

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