London, Aug 30: Residents in Manchester were woken today by their sixth earthquake in a month.

People reported wardrobe doors rattling and buildings creaking as the earthquake measuring an initial 2.4 on the Richter scale shook the city centre at about 5:45 am local time.

Julian Bukits, assistant seismologist at the British Geological Survey, said: ''About a dozen people have contacted us saying they had heard faint to moderate rumbling.'' ''It was a gentle wake-up call.'' It was the sixth earthquake to hit the city in the past month, all measuring between 1.4 and 2.5 magnitude.

A swarm of 150 tremors occurred in the same area between October 2002 and January 2003.

But Bukits reassured residents that earthquakes of such size would not cause damage.

''You need a magnitude of about 4.5, verging on 5, for any damage,'' he said.

In April, an earthquake measuring 4.2 hit Folkestone, damaging several houses.

Britain's largest officially recorded earthquake was 5.4 on the Llyn Peninsula, north Wales, in 1984, he said.

Bukits noted that despite the tremors, Manchester was not an earthquake hotspot.

''If you look at a map of Britain, certainly the Midlands, Wales and northwest Scotland have a lot of earthquakes: it is just that the areas are not so densely populated and the earthquakes are not so heavily reported.'' Quakes of 2.5 magnitude hit Britain between eight and nine times a year.


Reuters
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