It’s been quite a day in the Upper Hunter, with Muswellbrook copping the brunt of a ferocious storm around 3pm yesterday afternoon. Then, a total fire ban was announced for today with extreme conditions. And now, an earthquake.
A 2.6 magnitude earthquake was felt at 6:22am today, with the quake happening near the Mt Arthur Coal Mine, at a depth of 10km.
It comes after a 3.7 magnitude earthquake in September at the same site, and four more in a three-month span before it in 2024.
Despite the Mt Arthur mine getting most of the attention for the earthquakes, experts say they can’t be sure the quakes are directly linked to mining activity.
“Mines are often constructed on ancient faults because the faults are the reason that the mineral deposits form in the first place,” said Hadi Ghasemi, senior seismologist at Geoscience Australia.
“We know there are cases where the seismicity is actually linked to the mining activity because of removing, for example, large volume of the rock mass because of the mine, and then that’s when we call them induced earthquakes.”
Also happening today is a total fire ban. Extreme conditions are forecast across the Greater Hunter region.
It comes as clean-up efforts are underway across the Muswellbrook Shire following yesterday’s storm. More than 3,000 people were left without power and 70 seeking rescue from the NSW SES.
Almost 4,000 Optus customers were also left without mobile reception due to the outages.
