Over 8,000 Report Early Morning Quake To Observatory

The Observatory on Monday said, according to its initial analysis, a 4.1 magnitude earthquake jolted Hong Kong at 2.29am. It said the epicentre was about 92 kilometres east-northeast of the SAR, near the south-east coast of the mainland.

The Observatory said it had received over 8,000 locally-felt reports of minor shaking for a few seconds.

It said it had given an initial local intensity estimate of four on the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale - that is to say hanging objects swinging; and windows, dishes, and doors rattling.

Professor Chan Lung-sang from the HKU Department of Earth Sciences said it is quite rare for Hong Kong people to feel the tremor, even though the earthquake is unlikely to pose any imminent threat to the territory.

"This sort of event occurs probably once a decade in the Hong Kong area. It happened in the middle of the night [when] a lot of people were asleep, otherwise there would have been a lot more people who would have felt the earthquake,” he said.

"We do not have a lot of scaled earthquakes around Hong Kong. For an earthquake to be felt, the earthquake has to be close enough and sizeable enough. And this one  – magnitude 4 at about 100 km [from HK] –  the ground-shaking would have diminished quite a bit. We are not in immediate danger from an earthquake event like that."

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