A 6.0 magnitude earthquake that struck the southern coast of Iran was detected by the seismic station in Sakhir yesterday.
The Transportation and Telecommunications Ministry said Bahrain’s Meteorological Directorate recorded the quake at 2.15am, with an estimated depth of 20km underground in Iran.
More than 10 aftershocks followed throughout the day, varying in strength from 2.1 to 4.5 on the Richter Scale and in depth from three to 215km.
Located in the coastal Iranian province of Hormozgan, the earthquake’s epicentre was approximately 427km from Bahrain and was felt by people who were awake at the time.
“I was reading a book at 2am when I suddenly felt that something was wrong,” said Hoora resident Sree Bhat.
“My indoor plants’ leaves were moving, the TV shook, and I felt dizzy,” he added.
Several Instagram users in Bahrain felt the shock, however, a few said they could not differentiate between it and the high winds. “At first, I thought my head was spinning, until I realised that people around me felt the same way,” said Khalifa Al Abdan on Instagram.
“I felt the tremor at 2am and thought it was a violent gust of wind,” said Abdulrahman Al Maili on Instagram.
“The earthquake was detected by our network of stations as a 5.0 magnitude event in Southern Iran,” said the UAE’s National Centre of Meteorology.
It lasted almost a minute and affected Sharjah, Dubai and Ajman, with social media users in the country posting videos of ceiling light fixtures swaying.
Shocks were also detected in northern Iran and across the Arabian Gulf.
Different organisations measured the seismic activity differently – the German Research Centre for Geosciences, for example, reported a magnitude of 6.0, while the US Geological Survey and the French National Network of Seismic Monitoring placed it at 5.8. Meanwhile, European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre reported a 5.9 magnitude.
According to the Richter Scale, a 6.0 magnitude earthquake is considered ‘strong.’ The Bahrain Seismic station located in the remote and rocky Qila’a Al Amr in Sakhir, was opened in 2015 to operate as part of a network of more than 20 earthquake detection stations also in the UAE and Oman.
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