Residents were shaken by what felt like an “underground explosion” after England’s strongest earthquake in two years affected towns and villages across Lancashire and Cumbria.
A 3.3-magnitude earthquake was felt as far as 30 miles from the epicentre near the coastal village of Silverdale in Lancashire shortly after 11.23pm on Wednesday, with reports of tremors being felt in Blackpool.
Lancashire police said in an online statement: “There have been no reports of anyone injured or damage caused but we have officers in the area, together with colleagues from the Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service and the North West Ambulance Service.”
People across the region said their houses had shaken, with one saying they felt as if the area “had been bombed”.
The British Geological Survey (BGS) confirmed that it was the strongest earthquake in England since another magnitude 3.3 event in Staffordshire in 2023, and the second to occur in the UK this month, after a 1.0 magnitude event in Newport, south Wales, on Monday.
Earthquakes of 3.0 magnitude and above are relatively rare in the UK. Only a tenth of the 200 to 300 seismic incidents reported every year were strong enough for people to feel them, the BGS said.
A spokesperson said there were two or three earthquakes of similar magnitude in the UK every year, but Wednesday’s event appears to be the strongest in north-west England since a magnitude 3.7 tremor shook Morecambe Bay in 2009.
Residents posted online that it “felt like an underground explosion” and was “so powerful it shook the whole house”.
The Volcano Discovery website, which also collects information on earthquakes, received more than 1,100 reports from people in the area, and emergency services reported numerous calls about the noise before the earthquake was confirmed.
Most reports detailed “light” or “weak” disturbance. People in Carnforth, about five miles south of the epicentre, described feeling their homes shake. There were also reports that the tremor caused dogs to panic and bark incessantly and of shop alarms being triggered.
Sarah, the landlord of a local pub, said the quake had made glasses behind the bar shake. “Luckily nothing got broken but it was so strange,” she said. “I’ve never felt anything like it, but there wasn’t any real damage on our end.”
One resident posted online that she felt as if the town “had just been bombed”, while another said they initially suspected an explosion at the nearby Heysham nuclear power station in Morecambe.
Liz Unsworth, a Silverdale parish councillor, told the BBC the earthquake had been “really scary” and that it had felt as if her house was disintegrating around her.
“I was relaxing before going to bed and I suddenly felt like my roof was falling in, the house was shaking,” she said. “All my neighbours were outside, we didn’t know what it was.”
The most recent earthquake measuring more than 3.3 magnitude was felt in parts of Perth and Kinross in Scotland on 20 October. The BGS said it had struck at 7.25am with its epicentre in Pubil in the Glen Lyon region.
