Areas including Kagiso, Mellville and some parts of Soweto experienced a tremor at around 8:30 am today morning. The tremor, the cause of which is clearly unknown at this moment, caused a great amount of fear as residents described the case of shaky grounds and windows trembling, this goes as far as causing floors and furniture to shake for a matter of seconds. Most people say that they thought it was just a false alarm, nothing serious as it initially started.
Unit manager at the Seismology unit at the council for Geoscience Michelle Grobbellar reported that they registered an event at 08:30 am with a magnitude of about 2.5. She added that a tremor of this magnitude is quite small for people to feel it but it could be that it is shallow so it was not felt in most parts. This is initial and still needs confirmation from analysts. Comments on Twitter reveal that it was also felt in Dobsonville, Newlands and some parts of Soweto. Over a year ago, the tremor happened in different areas including Emmarentia, Northcliff, Kempton park, Westgate and some parts of Soweto.
In the past tremor activities, the rules of seismology stated that history would repeats itself and that a few more would hit the country maybe one, two or possibly three. In 2010 Dr Chris Hartnady first warned in a UN newsletter that South Africa was almost certainly going to be struck by an earthquake. It was just a matter of when and not if, and so it happened, the biggest to ever hit South Africa, a tremor of 5,5 magnitude hit the country and it was felt as far as Mozambique and Botswana. This happened numerous times and it mostly affected the North West province.
The tremor was centred in Orkney, 120 kilometres South west of Johannesburg, an area with a high concentration of deep gold mines. This tremor still needs more analysis and hopefully we will know more about it as time goes by.
