2 devastating earthquakes that hit South Eastern Turkey and parts of Syria earlier today (Monday) have both been felt here on the Isle of Wight.
In the early hours of this morning, a powerful earthquake struck near the Turkish city of Gaziantep with another felt in the nearby city of Kahramanmaras, both of which sent shockwaves across Europe and as far as the Island.
Graham Petrie, who monitors the seismometer at Carisbrooke Castle Museum, confirmed the earthquake had been registered here saying that the Island shook when the tremors were felt – some 2,600 miles from the original incident.
The magnitude 7.8 first quake, which measured around 10km in depth, first appeared on the seismometer at around 04:30 local time (01:30 GMT), whilst at around 13:30 local time (10:30 GMT) during the 2nd incident – a magnitude 7.5 quake – movement was also picked up at the English Heritage site.
Back in 2011 the seismometer, which isn’t bolted down, was temporarily shut down as a result of the force produced by the Fukushima incident in Japan.
Graham has told Island Echo:
“The first was a mag 7.8 quake and the second one was mag 7.5. The seismometer is that of the horizontal pendulum variety, I remotely operate the apparatus from home.
“There have been many earthquakes over Mag 6.0 over the years.”
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At the time of writing around 1,000 people have sadly been confirmed dead with rescue efforts in Turkey and neighbouring Syria set to continue into the next few days.
Southern water will use it as an excuse no doubt
Maybe you should include how John Milne, an island based scientist, pretty much invented seismology with the machine he built at carisbrooke. He is revered in Japan, he lived there for some time building their early warning systems.
I guess that means all public transport to be suspended for 5 months..