Bureau of Meteorology says no tsunami threat from quake, which occurred at a depth of 200km in the Banda Sea, north of Australia

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Darwin residents have reported buildings swaying and parts of the city centre have been evacuated after a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit the city.

The epicentre of the earthquake was in the Banda Sea, north of Timor-Leste, on Monday and prompted reports of large tremors in the Top End city.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued an alert just after 1pm saying there was no tsunami threat to Australia following the earthquake.

Residents in Darwin reported large tremors and feeling tables shake but there were no immediate reports of major damage or injury.

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Jonathan Bathgate, a seismologist at Geoscience Australia, said the 7.2 magnitude earthquake had occurred just before midday approximately 700km (435 miles) north of Darwin. The quake had hit at a depth of about 200km below the sea.

“It was certainly something that was felt quite strongly in the Darwin CBD area,” he said.

Bureau of Meteorology, Australia (@BOM_au) No #tsunami threat to Australia from #earthquake felt in #Darwin (magnitude 7.2 near Banda Sea). See https://t.co/Tynv3ZPROS. pic.twitter.com/SsOgIiJXNZ

A Darwin resident, Leah Potter, told Guardian Australia it had felt like “everything was rocking”.

“It felt like there were two,” she said. “First there was just a little one and my son came in wondering what was happening, then there was a pause and there was a really a big one and the place was rocking.

“We went outside and there were backpackers, I don’t know what country they were from, but they were holding on to the railing looking pretty scared. But, yeah, everything was rocking for a while.”

Kathleen Gazzola (@kathleengazzola) Significant earth tremor rocks Darwin for several minutes. The ATWS reports a 7.2 magnitude earthquake was recorded at 12.03pm in the Banda Sea @9NewsDarwin @9NewsAUS pic.twitter.com/YlYX3Fbt0V

A Palmerston resident, Kavinda Weerachandra, said some small cracks had appeared on his wall after the quake. He was at home working when “all of a sudden everything started shaking”.

“I didn’t think much of it first but as time goes [on] it got stronger,” he said.

“I can hear my house creaking and rattling. And things on my desk started to fall. And I was genuinely worried for my life for a second there.”

Parts of the city’s central business district were evacuated after the tremor.

Robert Baird (@rj_baird) It's an early lunch for these office workers... Pele Savage works in the 20-storey Paspaley building with colleague, Suzette Co:



"Everything was rocking... I was leaning back in my chair and I thought I was going to fall off" pic.twitter.com/91V0cZDEFD

Domenic Fracaro was one of hundreds of residents and office workers evacuated during the earthquake. He told the ABC he had been preparing lunch at a kitchen bench “when I heard this roar”.

“I thought it was a jet aircraft down very low, and my wife started running for the front door,” he said. “All the drawers started opening in the kitchen, and I said to her, ‘What’s going on?’

“And she said, ‘It’s an earthquake, come on, let’s get out of here.’

“So I left everything there and we ran down the fire escape, but while we were in that stairwell, the stairwell was rocking that hard, just side to side.

“I lost my balance, a couple of times. It’s the worst one I’ve ever experienced in the four years we’ve been here, that’s for sure.”

Bathgate said earthquakes of that magnitude were not uncommon in the Banda Sea.

“We get magnitude sevens not often but on a regular sort of basis,” he said. “The last magnitude seven in this area was in 2012 at 7.1, and prior to that there was a 7.1 in 2005. They happen sort of once every 10 years or even more frequently than that.”

Sowaibah Hanifie (@SowaibahH) Scenes in Darwin city as people evacuated from buildings after what’s believed to be an earthquake @abcdarwin pic.twitter.com/YaTVu3T6ld

The quake came just hours after a 6.1-magnitude earthquake hit Papua, also in the eastern part of the south-east Asian archipelago.

That quake hit about 240km west of the town of Abepura in Papua province, at a relatively shallow depth of 21km, according to the United States Geological Survey.

There were also no immediate reports of casualties.

A shallower 6.3-magnitude hit the area last week, but the damage was not extensive.

Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity owing to its position on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide.

A University of Melbourne earthquake scientist, Assoc Prof Mark Quigley, told Guardian Australia that seismic activity in the region tended to “ebb and flow”.

“The seismic activity waxes and wanes all the time – it’s one of the more seismic active parts of the planet,” he said.

“So we get ebbs and flows and sometimes they talk to each other, they communicate stresses along the plate boundary and set others off. There’s nothing particularly sinister about major earthquakes there because they’re literally happening all the time.”