Earthquake in Lincolnshire: 27 February 2008

RMW Musson (BGS Scotland) I was woken abruptly at 1:30am by the ringing of my phone, which was sitting on the shelf above the bedroom radiator. The phone ringing in the middle of the night usually means only one thing: bad news. I took the phone into the hall so as not to disturb my wife more than need be. A colleague of mine was on the line: There’s been a large earthquake in Lincolnshire. It’s about 5.” Visions of damage raced through my mind. Magnitude 5 is not big in world terms, but is about the upper end of what is experienced in Britain. And size is not everything: location is critical. We have been fortunate in the UK in recent years, as the largest British earthquakes have mostly occurred well away from large cities. The two previous 5s (in 1984 and 1990) were in the extreme north-west of Wales and the Shropshire countryside respectively. However, an earthquake in Lincolnshire in 1185, probably about 5 in magnitude, brought down a large part of Lincoln cathedral and, if folklore is to be believed, so destroyed some nearby villages that they were never rebuilt. Was this a repeat of the 1185 earthquake? OK, I’m on my way.” The streets of Edinburgh were completely deserted as I drove up to the BGS office on the southern edge of the city. Three of my colleagues were already there, bringing up data from the seismic monitoring network remotely over radio and computer links. By … Read More