by Blackpool has been hit by a magnitude 1.5 earthquake, the British Geological Survey (BGS) has said. The tremor, which had a depth of 2km, struck the Lancashire town at 7:36pm on Friday.
Residents described “a noise like an approaching train” and “cabinets shaking” during the quake, according to the BGS.
“We have received macroseismic reports online from residents in Blackpool, Little Plumpton, Weeton and Westby about this event,” the BGS said. “Reports described ‘a noise like an approaching train,’ ‘we and several neighbors heard it,’ ‘our dogs were upset,’ and ‘computer and cabinets shook.'”
It comes less than a month after a magnitude 2.1 tremor struck the Irish Sea, some 35km off the coast of Blackpool.
While none of the quakes measured particularly high on the Richter scale, they occurred at very shallow depths, which may make them more noticeable than those that take place deeper within the Earth’s crust.
Friday’s tremor registered as a 3 on the European Macroseismic Scale (EMS), which is used to indicate the intensity of an earthquake and has 12 possible divisions, from “non-felt” to “completely devastating.” Three denotes a “weak” earthquake, just strong enough to cause “noticeable shaking of many objects.”
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According to the BGS, the Blackpool area experienced some 135 tremors in 2019, when it was home to the UK’s only shale gas exploration site, Preston New Road.
The site, run by Cuadrilla, was shut down in August of that year and a moratorium on fracking was placed. This was briefly lifted last year by Liz Truss in a manifesto-breaking move, after the area was hit by a magnitude 2.9 earthquake.
It was the largest tremor ever caused by fracking, and was rated a six on the EMS intensity scale, which is considered sufficient to cause minor damage to buildings, such as hairline cracks in plaster. Cuadrilla said at the time that it was not strong enough to have caused property damage.
The magnitude 2.9 quake was the fourth “microseismic event” recorded to hit New Preston Road in just 11 days, after tremors measuring 2.1, 1.55 and 1.05 on the Richter scale. A recent analysis by the Liberal Democrats suggests that there were 192 earthquakes over the course of the 182 days the site was active between 2018 and 2019.
One resident, who said he lived a mile away from the former fracking site, said on Twitter that all his neighbors felt and heard the tremor on Friday. He described initially thinking “a car had crashed.”
