3.4 magnitude Earthquake hits Marble Bar

A magnitude-3.4 earthquake has hit Marble Bar in the Pilbara region.

The earthquake struck South East of the town just after 2:19pm yesterday.

Geoscience Australia said it was recorded at a depth of about 10km and predict the earthquake could have been felt by people up to 34km away.

Geoscience Australia spokesman Daniel Connolly said earthquakes in the area were not uncommon.

“As far as Australia goes it’s a pretty decent size earthquake,” he said.

“We do get a fair few off the North West Coast.

“In the last 30 years we’ve had 39 earthquakes about 100km of Marble Bar, so it’s a pretty specific area in the grand scheme of things.

“In this tightly constrained area we’ve had seven earthquakes within 100km of Marble bar.

“A few years prior to that we had a period of five years where we didn’t have a single earthquake in that area.”