By IRNA
London : Many parts of England were hit in the early hours of Wednesday with the biggest earthquake in the UK for nearly 25 years.
People as far apart of Newcastle in the northeast, Manchester in the northwest, central and eastern England as well as London were reported to have felt the tremor, which the British Geological Survey (BGS) recorded as having 5.3 magnitude in the epicentre.
Slight structural damage was caused in several places but no one was reportedly killed. One man is reported to have suffered leg injuries when a chimney collapsed in South Yorkshire in northern England.
The earthquake is the third and strongest in England in recent years. Central England was hit by an earthquake in 2002 reaching a magnitude of 5.0 and one measuring 4.3 hit Folkestone on the southeast coast last year.
The previous biggest was in Nefyn, north Wales in July 1984, measuring 5.4 and before that one with a magnitude of 6.1 hit the North Sea off Great Yarmouth in eastern England back in June 1931.
Brian Baptie of the BGS said that an earthquake of this size, of magnitude five or thereabouts, “will occur roughly every 10 to 20 years in the UK.”
The largest known to date was in 1931.