Cape Town - Residents of Tulbagh in the Western Cape and Orkney in the North West were left quaking after two earthquakes this weekend.
Volcano Discovery, an earthquake and volcano news portal, sent an alert that an earthquake occurred 23km north-west of Ceres on Friday at 1.26pm with a depth of 10km.
The Council for Geoscience confirmed that it occurred about 39km west of the 1969 Tulbagh earthquake.
Council for Geoscience spokesperson Mahlatse Mononela said both earthquakes straddled a prominent northwest-southeast fault line.
Witzenberg Municipality’s Fire, Rescue and Disaster Management Services manager Annelize Lamprecht-Vertue said the earthquake was felt in the towns of Tulbagh, Wolseley and surrounds.
Cape Winelands District Municipality spokesperson Jo-Anne Otto said there were no reports of damages or people affected.
Although the magnitude of this tremor was still unknown, Volcano Discovery noted it might have been 3.6. The 1969 earthquake measured 6.3 on the Richter scale.
Volcano Discovery recorded another earthquake on Sunday morning at 11.19am, 13km south-east of Orkney in Dr Kenneth Kaunda District Municipality in the North West. It was a moderate earthquake with a magnitude of 4.8.
“According to the US Geological Survey, the quake hit on Sunday, July 17 at 11.19am local time at a shallow depth of 10km. Shallow earthquakes are felt more strongly than deeper ones as they are closer to the surface.
“A second report was later issued by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC), which listed it as a magnitude 4.8 earthquake as well. A third agency, the citizen-seismograph network of RaspberryShake, reported the same quake at a magnitude 4.8,” Volcano Discovery said.