Thousands of local citizens were disturbed from their sleep as a 5.4 Richter scale reading earthquake erupted in Kojonup, a pastoral region to the south east of Perth. The impact was at its strongest at around 5 am WA time when residents in and around Perth and Albany were shaken out of their beds. Fortunately, the Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre ruled out the possibility of floods and inundations.
Tsunami warnings in Australia have been widespread, especially in the recent weeks. The Probabilistic Tsunami Hazard Assessment (PTHA) published by Geoscience Australia has listed out more than half a million locations that are highly prone to earthquake and tsunami incidents.
There is also a high probability of the north west of Australia’s western shoreline experiencing the repercussions of the frequent and intense earthquake activity in the Indonesian belt.
The updated data from the assessment activity will come in handy while planning risk management, rescue efforts and improvement of infrastructural resiliency. More than 50 tsunamis have been registered in Australia since the late 1700s when people of European descent began settling here.