The Leighton Bazard earthquake was the latest in Britain’s long history of earthquakes

When the Earth moved just before 9 a.m. on Tuesday, for residents of Leighton Bazard and an area about 15 miles away, it was causing some intense British panic in displaying breakfast time to the raw power of nature.

A homeowner likened the effect of the ground shaking across a patch of Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire to the effect of “a convoy of heavy trucks driving past my door very quickly”. In Lawton, Usha Chapman, who was on the phone with her mother, said, “I felt a sideways push. The door shook and the wall-mounted TV shook. It lasted for five seconds.”

On social media, someone posted a photo of wheelbarrow boxes apparently caused by the earthquake, pledging: “We will rebuild.”

Newsletter cuts off the noise

The reason for this sudden interruption of the morning routine, which triggered multiple calls to the Bedfordshire Police Control Room but later confirmed it did not cause injuries or major damage, was a 3.5 magnitude earthquake 6.2 miles below the peaceful streets of the market. Town of Leighton Buzzard.

Monitoring stations detected a magnitude 3.3 earthquake (later modified to 3.5) below Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire at 8.45 am on Tuesday (Photo: VolcanoDiscovery)

In the global scale of earthquakes, the Great Leighton Bazard Earthquake of 2020 was an earthquake relic. As one seismologist put it: “It’s pretty typical for a Brit in size three – some jewelery shakes and windows vibrate but that could have been about that.”

But the earthquake was a reminder that while Britain is nothing but a seismic stagnation – aside from the geological hazards of places like the San Andreas Fault or the “Ring of Fire” in the Pacific – it has had its fair share of tremors from the echoes of its geological past.

Monitoring stations

The British Geological Survey (BGS), which has more than 100 monitoring stations across the country directly linked to its headquarters in Edinburgh to track earthquakes in real time, estimates that Britain experiences an average of two earthquakes a year with a magnitude of three and above.

They are out of an average of 20 naturally occurring tremors each year of sufficient magnitude to be felt by humans. Then there are the dozen who only register with high-tech gadgets in various BGS caches across Earth. In August alone, a total of 28 earthquakes struck – ranging in magnitude from 0.1 to 0.1 magnitude in Portrith, Cornwall, to 2.6 on the Isle of Skye – Britain as part of the minute but nearly daily shift of the Earth’s surface.

Dr Richard Lockett, a seismologist at BGS, said: “All rocks under the UK are under some form of pressure and so we get these movements as this pressure is released periodically. But we never know where these little faults are until they happen – we cannot. We’re really predicting if he’s going to be a Leighton Buzzard in Stockton-on-Tees. “

Britain’s usual location at the end of the earthquake spectrum (in contrast to the horrific scenario of tremors capable of collapsing buildings) is due to its position as “inside the plate”. The British Isles, like the rest of Western Europe, lies in the middle of the Eurasia tectonic plate, and is thus far from any major geological pressure points. The closest ‘border’ to the UK is the mid-Atlantic ridge from which Europe moves an average of 2.5 cm per year – the same rate as a human’s fingernail.

Seismologists note that certain parts of Britain – western Scotland, Wales and parts of the North Sea – appear to have been hit by earthquakes more often than anywhere else (bafflingly, the island of Ireland does not have major earthquakes). However, the causes of this regional variation are unknown and may be random.

deadly

All this does not mean that Britain has never experienced catastrophic or even deadly earthquakes.

The largest earthquake the UK has ever seen was the 6.1 earthquake – which was 1,000 times stronger than this week’s earthquake – of 1931 in the North Sea at Dogger Bank. Because the earthquake was 60 miles offshore, the earthquake caused only minor damage to buildings on the east coast of England.

In 1884, residents of the area around Colchester, Essex, suffered the most devastating earthquakes in Britain when a 4.1-magnitude earthquake left some 1,250 buildings in need of repair, including four medieval churches. Such was the annoying ferocity of the vibration that historical records indicate that one woman – Mary Saunders, of Manningtree – threw herself into the Stour River a few days later and drowned.

In fact, records indicate that the British have been horrified and diverse by seismic events since at least the 10th century.

In 1382, a 5.5 magnitude earthquake struck the Dover Strait and was felt, among other places, in London where a meeting of bishops was held to denounce the teachings of the dissident thinker John Wycliffe. Records indicate that opposing parties at the meeting used the jolt to announce that their opponents had caused divine discontent.

A contemporary poem describing the event said: “Chamber, Chimini, all to Barst / Cherts and Castells Foley Gun far / Pinakles, Staples, to the ground that struck / Everyone was to warn.”

Britain is far from any tectonic plate boundary. Japan, one of the most seismically active regions in the world, was hit by a devastating earthquake of magnitude 9 and tsunami in March 2011 (Image: GETTY) Romeo and Juliet

It is widely believed that the second great tremor in the Dover Strait about 200 years later in 1580 provided more literary evidence for the Great British earthquakes when Shakespeare allowed one of his characters in Romeo and Juliet to notice “Tess since the earthquake is now 11 years”, allowing scholars to chronicle the play To the year 1591.

All of this begs the question of whether or not the British would ever find themselves at the mercy of a truly deadly earthquake.

The answer is that while Britain will not experience an officially “great” earthquake (rated 8 magnitude or more), it may experience a tremor of up to 6.5, according to research by BGS. Such an earthquake, which the official described as “powerful,” could cause widespread damage in a built-up area.

Dr. Lockett said: “Its strength is six degrees [quake] In the UK it can cause a lot of damage, depending on where it occurs. For example, Six Under London would likely be a major disaster. But we must remember that there are many variables – size is only one measure.

Even in this land of tiny tremors capable of inducing raised eyebrows and turbulent breakfasts, nature seems to retain the power to cause potential seismic havoc.

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