TWO further minor earthquakes have been recorded in Co Donegal within the past 36 hours.

They come less than three weeks after an earthquake measuring 1.6 was recorded in the northeast of the county.

The latest events on Tuesday night and yesterday morning measured 1.5 and 1.7 respectively and were felt by residents in the Termon and Milford areas, north of Letterkenny.

They were validated yesterday by the School of Cosmic Physics in the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies.

But Dr Thomas Blake, experimental officer at the school, ruled out any link with the Haiti earthquake.

He also said that they were not indicators of a build up to a major event.

Callers to Highland Radio reported feeling tremors at around 8.50pm on Tuesday and 7.50am on Wednesday.

One man who lives in the village of Termon, five kilometres north of Letterkenny said he was watching television with his wife when he felt the tremor on Tuesday night. He said it felt like a lorry passing by but when he went outside he could hear nothing.

Dr Blake said that the reports bore out what had been observed on the seismic traces that had recorded both events.

"They were tremors that were quite small, the sort of characteristic magnitudes that we would expect in an area like Donegal which consists of faulted rocks. It is the relief of stress on these faults which is what people are feeling," he explained.

He added that while it may be a "statistical blip", the occurrence of three earthquakes in the past three weeks was not any indicator of a larger event.

"It is not unusual for earthquakes to occur in swarms, in other words having three or four sometimes even in the one day. I don't think that it is evidence of build up to any major event. Having said that I could be proved wrong in the morning because we can't predict earthquakes," he said.

Following the last Donegal earthquake on January 7, 20 people filled out questionnaires on http://bit.ly/donegalquake

Irish Independent