DURBAN – The Council for GeoScience has confirmed that it recorded an earthquake today in the Northern Cape.
"Our website has recorded a 2.2-magnitude earthquake which occurred today at 12:06 near Postmasburg, in the Northern Cape," the council's Mahlatse Mononela said.
According to volcanodiscovery.com, its monitoring service, AllQuakes received reports of an earthquake in or near Springbok in the Northern Cape just after 5am on Monday.
“There are no records of an earthquake that occurred this morning in Springbok during that time on any of our seismic monitoring systems,” Mononela said.
Jasper Knight, professor at the Wits University's School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies,, said an earthquake of this magnitude was very small and nothing to fret over.
Knight said such earthquakes happened often and without people even noticing.
"This is due to the movement on rocks within the earth's interior. This is nothing to worry about and there would be no damage caused," he said.
In November last year, a 3.5-magnitude earthquake that lasted 10 seconds struck Saldanha while residents around Cape Town reported that they felt the tremor.
The US Geological Survey confirmed and said the depth of the quake was 5km.
On September 26, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake was detected roughly 1 600km offshore in Cape Town which was then followed by 2.5- and 2.9-magnitude tremors that were felt even in the Northern Suburbs.