Yorkshire Dales village shaken by earthquake

Residents of a North Yorkshire village have said they were left shaken in their beds by an early morning earthquake.

The 2.5-magnitude quake was recorded just after 01:30 BST on Friday to the south west of Litton in the Yorkshire Dales, and it had a depth of 2.5 miles (4km), according to the British Geological Survey (BGS).

Earthquakes below a magnitude of 2.5 can sometimes only be picked up with monitoring equipment, but the quake in the Dales was reportedly felt by a number of people in the village and surrounding area.

Sandra Lund, from Litton, said it was the "weirdest experience" she and her husband had ever had.

"There was a huge bang, it sounded like an explosion," she said.

"My husband is actually deaf and he still heard it - that's how loud it was.

"We were looking for smoke, we were dumbfounded. Then everything was just still."

Mrs Lund said neither of them felt anything else afterwards, but she was left unable to sleep as she was "convinced something had blown up".

Meanwhile, Debbie Roe said she was woken by the sound of two loud bangs which she first thought was "my cats jumping off the bed".

"But they were probably the bangs other people heard, and then there was a low rumbling for maybe 10 seconds," she explained.

Another local resident told the BBC she and her husband experienced "a loud rumbling noise and the ground shaking".

However, she added that "it didn't last long at all".

For heavier sleepers, however, online chatter on Friday morning was the first they had heard of any seismic activity in the area.

Councillor Richard Foster said he "didn't hear anything, I slept right through".

Davie Galloway, BGS seismologist, said the organisation received reports that the quake had sounded like "a large truck coming up the lane".

"Each year, between 200 and 300 earthquakes are detected and located in the UK by the BGS," he said.

"Between 20 to 30 earthquakes are felt by people each year and a few hundred smaller ones are only recorded by sensitive instruments, like the Litton earthquake this morning."

He said that although the Yorkshire Dales are distant from the nearest plate boundary, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, earthquakes could occur as forces acting on tectonic plates were relieved by movement on pre-existing fault planes.

"While UK earthquakes tend to be relatively small, no one can be complacent and the BGS keeps a database for use in seismic assessment and to provide near-immediate responses to significant events, if and when required," Mr Galloway added.

The last earthquake recorded in North Yorkshire was at Kilnsey in Wharfedale on 18 March, which had a magnitude of two.

On Tuesday, the BGS recorded a 1.2-magnitude earthquake in Cardiff.

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