Small earthquake shakes homes on Dartmoor
Residents on Dartmoor have described their shock after being hit by a small earthquake that shook homes “like a jet engine.”
The 2.7 Richter scale tremor struck at around 1.45pm yesterday, near Bovey Tracey, Devon.
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The British Geological Survey (BGS) said it was an “unusual occurrence,” with approximately 10-12 quakes of this magnitude felt in the UK per year.
Police said there were no reports of injury or damage, but some people said their properties shook.
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One woman from the Bovey Tracey area who felt the quake said: “It lasted about ten seconds. It was like a jet engine roaring outside the house.
“All my pictures on the wall started to shake – I was wondering what was going on.”
Another woman felt an aftershock a few miles away in Moretonhampsted at 2.45pm.
She said: “It was very frightening. It felt as though my house was falling.
“My table was shaking and moving, my radiators were rattling – my dog was going crazy – I thought the neighbour’s new roof had collapsed. It was terrifying.”
A spokesman for the BGS said: “While a 2.7 tremor is millions of times smaller than big international quakes it was shallow and felt by quite a lot of people.
“While Britain isn’t on the edge of a tectonic plate it does have seismic activity and sometimes tremors happen around fault lines.”
The society said the last earthquake measuring a similar magnitude in Devon centred on Dartmoor in 1995.
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